Marketing: The Simplicity Issue by Niche Media

MARKETING

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2018

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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FEATURES 14 Simpliﬁed marketing: top techniques 22 Shoestring marketing at NFPs 40 Marketer proﬁle Tracy Brown

CASE STUDIES 66 Mercedes-Benz Vans Tough Conversations 70 Anchor Milk NZ X-Ray Casts 74 Mount Hotham 10 Feet Tall 78 Xbox Australia Stay N’ Play

INFOGRAPHICS 28 Goldﬁsh syndrome? 46 Pictorial trends 58 Automation through the ages 40

INTERVIEWS 32 Adam Ferrier Six-second simplicity 62 Facebook and the AFL

CONTRIBUTED 46

38 Frank Chamberlin Twenty tips for writing copy 52 Rod Moynihan The business mullet 56 Craig Flanders Simplifying agency rosters

84 Mark Henning Decluttering digital

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BEST OF THE WEB

CONTENT PARTNERS 36 Research Now SSI Voice of Industry survey: retail 30 Forrester Incentivising CX: myths busted 54 UnLtd A clear purpose

86 Editor’s choice Adam Ferrier 88 Most shared Nate Vickery 90 Most read Xavier Cramer 88

COLUMNS 92 Steve Sammartino Too many functions 94 Anne Rayner #UsFirst 96 Sérgio Brodsky Designed complexity 98 Con Stavros Socks and shoes

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Contributors

Editor BEN ICE ben.ice@niche.com.au Sub editor MADELEINE SWAIN Editorial design KEELY GOODALL Production manager ALICIA PINNOCK alicia.pinnock@niche.com.au Digital pre-press KARL DYER Publisher JANE BOWMAN Tel: +61 408 180 288 jane.bowman@niche.com.au Subscription enquiries Tel: 1800 804 160 subscriptions@niche.com.au www.marketingmag.com.au

ADAM FERRIER Page 86

ANNE RAYNER Page 94

CON STAVROS Page 98

CRAIG FLANDERS Page 56

FIONA KILLACKEY Page 14

FRANK CHAMBERLIN Page 38

JOSH LOH Pages 28, 46, 58, 62

MARK HENNING Page 84

Marketing is a publication of Niche Media Pty Ltd ABN 13 064 613 529. Suite 1418, Level 14, 1 Queens Road, Melbourne VIC 3004 Tel +613 9948 4900 Fax +613 9948 4999 CHRIS FREEL Page 54 Chairman NICHOLAS DOWER Managing director PAUL LIDGERWOOD Commercial director JOANNE DAVIES Financial controller SONIA JURISTA Printing SOUTHERN COLOUR

Marketing ISSN 1441–7863 © 2018 Niche Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, internet, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publishers accept no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or resultant consequences including any loss or damage arising from reliance on information in this publication. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily endorsed by the editor, publisher or Niche Media Pty Ltd. Niche Media Privacy Policy This issue of Marketing may contain offers, competitions, surveys, subscription offers and premiums that, if you choose to participate, require you to provide information about yourself. If you provide information about yourself to NICHE MEDIA, NICHE MEDIA will use the information to provide you with the products or services you have requested (such as subscriptions). We may also provide this information to contractors who provide the products and services on our behalf (such as mail houses and suppliers of subscriber premiums and promotional prizes). We do not sell your information to third parties under any circumstances, however the suppliers of some of these products and services may retain the information we provide for future activities of their own, including direct marketing. NICHE MEDIA will also retain your information and use it to inform you of other NICHE MEDIA promotions and publications from time to time. If you would like to know what information NICHE MEDIA holds about you please contact The Privacy Ofﬁcer, NICHE MEDIA PTY LTD, 1 Queens Road MELBOURNE VIC 3004.

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MAXIE SCHMIDT Page 30

NATE VICKERY Page 88

ROD MOYNIHAN Page 52

SÉRGIO BRODSKY Page 96

STEVE SAMMARTINO Page 92

TRACEY PORTER Page 22

XAVIER CRAMER Page 90

Image credit: Luke Stackpoole via Unsplash

MICHELLE KEOMANY Page 40

SAM STERN Page 30

Many thanks to Content Partners*

CONTENT PARTNER: a Marketing Content Partner is an organisation with which we’ve entered into a partnership to collaborate on content for the magazine.

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Plan. Optimise. Prove. DART360 empowers brands to gain a deeper understanding of audiences â&#x20AC;&#x201C; what consumers think, what they do and where to locate them.

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Editor's note H

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as something like this ever happened to you at work? To save time each week and minimise errors in their workflow, the accounts department introduces a new procedure for submitting paperwork. The problem is, it means you now have to print out a form, fill it in by hand, get it signed, walk (past accounts) to the scanner room down the hall, scan it, save the file to your thumb drive, take it back to your computer, then email it to accounts? And you have to do this twice a day. But you have to do it three times on Thursdays, of course, because Friday traffic’s a nightmare and they would rather hit the road early? Any time new measures are thought up to simplify things around the office, I wince and envision such a scenario. What makes life easier for one person or part of a company very often creates new work for others. Proper organisational simplicity is a complex business, the result of a great deal of movement and brains behind the scenes. We predicted this Simplicity Issue would be a slightly trickier topic than our first three issues of the year – experience, money and trust. Would it get marketers and other professionals in the industry talking? It was exciting to watch the material start to come in. Everyone had something to say. When you think about it, it stands to reason. Our work lives are an always-on struggle to stay on top of trends, data and

Ben Ice Editor, Marketing.

technology. The rest is a juggling act as we maintain relationships, health, family and finance. We grapple with constant complexity and few among us sit around saying ‘if only things weren’t so painfully simple’. Specific to marketing, there are a wealth of solutions available to make things a little easier to manage. Automation, dashboards and AI, to name a few. The problem is, the very moment we get something under our control, everything changes and we, all of a sudden, find ourselves playing catch-up again. Today’s solutions are exactly that. They cannot offer simple solutions for tomorrow’s problems. It’s a moving target and it’s frustrating, but it’s better addressed daily than weekly, monthly, yearly or – in the case of too many failed and failing businesses – never. In times like these, complacency is the enemy. Just because you happened to get approval on that flashy simplification software solution for another 12 months, it doesn’t mean it’s time to put your feet up. There’s so much more to it than that. As for Marketing’s dynamite tips for simplifying absolutely everything, well, read on. There’s plenty about that in these pages, but look, I had better go for now. I just realised I left some sensitive material in the scanner down the hall. – Ben

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“It’s not a case that shareholders will be disappointed. People will actually die.” (22)

“It’s hard work – and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something.”

Simplicity /sɪmˈplɪsɪti/ Noun 1. The quality or condition of being easy to understand or do. 2. The quality or condition of being plain or uncomplicated in form or design. Origin Late Middle English: from Old French simplicite or Latin simplicitas, from simplex ‘composed or characterised by a single part or structure.’

(14)

“Employees will ask, beg or guilt customers into giving them high ratings in surveys.” (30)

“What I needed was simplicity. Do less, have less, but with clearer purpose.” (54)

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“You can use the strengths of one agency to keep the others honest.” (56)

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

“If the mullet is the goal, what kind of haircut is your business rocking right now?” (52)

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“If you take that work on board you have to work like a bastard, you have to work really fast and keep your eyes open.” (40)

“The industry has not completely removed itself from the shackles of the old analogue world.” (86)

“The new age digital marketer is in trouble if all they know how to do is lazy targeting.” (90)

“The challenge for marketers is to resist the temptation to throw features at a technologyweary consumer.” (92)

“Australia’s media and marketing landscape needs to actively demonstrate how and why it is nurturing and rewarding people.” (94)

“Keep this complexity intact, without falling into the trap of dumbing down its richness.”

(96)

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14 FEATURE

123RF’s Vacharapong © 123RF.com

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Simplicity in marketing: top techniques In an era when every marketer is ‘busy, busy, busy’ can we actually slow down enough to simplify what we do and still succeed? Fiona Killackey speaks with Australia’s leading marketers and product experts about the things they’re doing to simplify the way they work.

onsider the last project or campaign you delivered. Chances are it didn’t go straight from ideation to ﬁnished product in one simple, easy to replicate journey. Instead there may have been meetings about meetings, feedback and opinions from people with no genuine connection to the campaign (but who feel it necessary to overcomplicate the process with their considerations) and a wealth of different documents and presentations to create for stakeholders and investors ‘just in case’ they wanted to be made aware of what’s going on. We are all guilty of overcomplicating things. With a seemingly endless supply of project management tools and social media platforms, it’s no wonder that marketing can become one of the most overcomplicated and complex areas of a business. Does a Slack cancel out the use of office email, or do we use both communication modes for different things? Should we use Asana for blog content, but Trello for our agile boards? Do we need CoSchedule and ConvertKit, or will MailChimp and Leadpages allow us to do all this? Is Google Analytics sufficient, or should we also be utilising Google Search Console? Do we need to update

Snapchat once a day or should we focus our attention on Instagram Stories? Is SEMrush better than Backlink.io or should we scrap both in favour of Ahrefs? These are some of the questions modern marketers are faced with every day, leading teams and tools that often hinder, rather than help, business goals. Steve Jobs famously admitted he lived by the mantra ‘focus and simplicity’. According to Jobs, “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.” So, what does ‘simplicity’ look like for marketers today? What are they doing to simplify their marketing and the way they work?

It sounds like Marketing 101 to focus on your key message, but it’s always so tempting to try to sneak in as much as you can.

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16 FEATURE

As an energy provider, keeping things simple is important for our customers. At Powershop, we have a lot of great things to say about our brand and company. It’s a good problem to have: the greenest power company in Australia, the only power company to be 100 percent carbon neutral, award-winning service, amazing app, a focus on fairness and transparency. The problem is: as marketers we often fall into the trap of trying to tell our customers everything at once, because it’s all information we want them to know. It sounds like Marketing 101 to focus on your key message, but it’s always so tempting to try to sneak in as much as you can. So, to simplify things, we’ve undertaken a much stricter approach to our mass communications to focus on just one thing. That is, if we’re not talking about being a better, greener solution for our customers, then we need to save the message for another time. Keeping our messages aligned and simple is the best way for our customers to get the information they need in an already complex industry.

SQUARE Jessica Cook, head of marketing – Australia As a global brand that is still new to the Australian market, it’s important for Square to implement simplicity – literally – in everything we do. That means we keep Square campaigns and messaging as simple and easy to digest as possible. This is not only effective for raising our brand proﬁle, but is also reﬂective of what our customers like about Square’s products and services. We strip back all the clutter and focus on the key value that we offer to our customers: payments, made simple.

CAN WE WORK SMARTER TO LIVE BETTER? In 2011, the French-born, Australia-based author, mentor, consultant and coach Cyril Peupion published Work Smarter, Live Better. In the seven years since, it’s consistently topped best business books lists and helped broadcast Peupion’s message about keeping things simple to millions across the globe. Marketing sits down with Peupion to discuss what modern marketers and teams can do to reduce the stress and start simplifying the way they work. Marketing: Your book Work Smarter, Live Better is full of advice for people wanting to simplify the way they work. What would you say are the most common lessons people appear to take from the book? Cyril Peupion: It’s hard to zoom in on only a few lessons as everyone is different, at different stage of their career and therefore resonate with different practices. But if I have to list the top ﬁve, it would be:

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POWERSHOP AUSTRALIA Catherine Anderson, head of marketing

HOW TO DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE: your hard ﬁles, soft ﬁles, email folders. We are all bombarded with information. And storage is very cheap. The issue is not storage, but the time spent looking for things you already have. INBOX MANAGEMENT: we are all also bombarded with emails constantly. Many people are losing this ‘battle’ on how to manage their inbox. TASK MANAGEMENT: what system do you use to manage your tasks, a paper, an Excel spreadsheet, an app? What process do you use to manage your tasks? Most people have never been taught how to do this. PRIORITISATION: how to prioritise the numerous things you have to do on a daily basis. FOCUS: how to keep focused in a world full of interruptions and distractions.

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You work with many businesses – large and small – to help them change and simplify the way they work. Why is simplicity so important?

Can you discuss the routines or daily practices you yourself adhere to that anyone reading Marketing magazine could replicate immediately in their own life?

The way you and your team works not only has a big impact on your performance, but more importantly on your team’s engagement and life. People think ﬁrst it’s about email management, ﬁle management, task management and so on. Not at all. It’s about freedom and life. Freeing you from all the daily stress of workload, emails, meetings… and ultimately transforming people’s life by changing their work habits.

BATCH: do not check your email and your task day list constantly. Have two email processing meetings per day. Outside of this, resist the temptation to check your email. Have a big task planning session every week.

So in what way will simplifying how you work actually impact your life outside of work? I think it impacts at three levels: your time, your stress and your personal habits: YOUR TIME: if you work smarter you can achieve much more in less time, and have more time for your loved ones and your passions.

TRIAGE: when it’s time to process your email, you are not doing your emails, you are just processing them. Apply this simple rule: if something will take less than five minutes, do it now. If it will take more than five minutes, schedule it now in your calendar. Morning is for thinking: protect the first two hours of your day for high-impact priorities. This is the time when your brain is fresh and your thinking is sharp. Don’t use this time for emails or day-to-day crises.

YOUR STRESS: one of the impacts of working smarter is to feel less stressed and more in control.

What advice would you give to someone who’s reading this but worried they don’t have the seniority to change the way their team or business works?

YOUR PERSONAL HABITS: I believe these simple principles to work smarter are as important, if not more, on a personal level. They are not ‘work’ habits, they are ‘life’ habits.

I love the quote from Gandhi ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. You can always blame the world for these issues, and you may be right. But it’s best to start with you, with your personal work habits.

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18 FEATURE

We focus on simplifying our goals. We work on achieving on one big ambitious goal at a time that’s aligned to a broader long-term vision for the Mercedes-Benz Vans brand. Marketing functions consists of so many disciplines that teams can struggle to align their internal teams and external agencies to the key business objectives. Mercedes-Benz Vans has the ambition to build brand awareness in a broader market. We develop strategy that focuses on one big idea at a time. One of our big goals last year was the launch of a new type of vehicle in the Australian market, the Marco Polo Activity. We partnered with Airbnb to bring the essence of that vehicle to life. Our latest big goal has been the launch of the X-Class ute and we have another big project planned for the second half of the year. These projects, supported fully by our internal and external teams, have all aligned with the bigger vision for the brand. By simplifying how much we try to achieve and focusing on achieving one thing at a time exceptionally well, we have had a much bigger impact on our brand value and business objectives.

We took a step back and focused on what our community needed and how best we could help build a collaborative community. WEWORK AUSTRALIA Balder Tol, general manager At WeWork, everything we do is centred on building collaborative communities. That singular focus is what makes WeWork special. Remembering what our core mission is and focusing all of our marketing efforts to truly build collaborative communities helped simplify our marketing. Instead of everyone running in different directions, trying to introduce WeWork to everyone, we took a step back and focused on what our community needed and how best we could help build a collaborative community. That single focus trickled down across everything – from how we speak about our brand to where we share our stories and with whom we engage.

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MERCEDES-BENZ VANS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND Blake Vincent, PR and corporate communications manager

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SIMPLIFYING FOR PRODUCTIVITY Adam Jelic is the founder and director behind one of Australia’s most successful stationery and productivity brands, Mi Goals. Since launching in 2010, Mi Goals has garnered a loyal global following with its cheeky Get S**t Done notebooks, goals books and productivity planners. For our Simplicity issue, we meet with the Melbourne-based founder for tips on simplifying the way we work and live.

Marketing: You’re a leader in the productivity space. In what ways have you and your team simpliﬁed the way you work at Mi Goals to be more productive?

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Adam Jelic: By collectively working on tasks and projects that actually help the business grow and not just survive. Like most small- to mid-sized businesses, we tend to wear multiple hats, which can make it a challenge when it comes to a simplified work environment. Sometimes the simple act of understanding what’s important and what isn’t – and actually making it visible to all – helps make the difference. We use a basic whiteboard and each week update the board with the important, momentum-building tasks we must get done as a business to move us forward. What’s one mistake you think people make when it comes to simplifying how they work? The common mistake we all make is trying to change our routines, habits and lives overnight. We have all seen it before (or done it ourselves) where we decide to get fit and join the gym and start with a bang – going six times in our first week, then five in the following week and it dwindling down to one or two sessions until we end up just not even going. Creating lasting change takes time, patience and a lot of hard work. The best way to simplify your life is by making small incremental changes over time and getting into the habit of being consistent in your actions. What are three things people could do today to help them get more stuff done/be more productive? Self audit: self audit the way you work and live life regularly. I use the simple acronym RAM (reflect, acknowledge, move) to check in on my goals, productivity and mental state. I do this monthly as it allows me to pause, acknowledge my wins and losses and, as a result, make better decisions, which move me forward towards my goals. Set goals: one of the biggest issues hindering our productivity is that we are lacking focus, clarity and direction in our lives. Today we are inundated with so much information and constant distractions that if we don’t have a filter mechanism or something we are working towards, we can easily fall into the trap of being constantly overwhelmed. As a result we develop what I call ‘action paralysis’, which means we have all these things we need to do, but we struggle to do them because we don’t have a vision and compelling reason to do those things. When you have compelling and exciting goals, including a detailed written action plan on how you intend to achieve them, then it’s a lot easier to be more productive. Focus on major, not minor: focus on major tasks not minor tasks. Understanding what are major and important tasks to help you grow is what you should get into the habit of actioning. Minor tasks are still important, but shouldn’t take up too much time in your day. In addition to this, learning to say no to certain tasks is really important to being more productive.

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20 FEATURE

The frustrating thing about simplicity is that it’s so incredibly complicated. It’s hard work – and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably about to sell you something. So, in that sense, and at the risk of dodging the question, at The School of Life we haven’t found that one thing. Although we’re using a lot of tools to increase internal efficiency, our recent marketing focus has really been centred on simplifying and reﬁning the actual conversations we have with people out there in the real world. Before we ask people to commit to a class or workshop, we’re looking at how they’ve engaged with The School of Life in the past – do they already understand the importance of emotional intelligence and how a thousand or so years of cultural wisdom can impact their everyday lives? We’re working with our ticketing platform, Ferve, to build a lot of that nuance into our reporting, but the real energy goes into unpacking and applying that insight, so we can build meaningful relationships with the human beings who are about to begin a rather personal journey with us. At the very least, a more thoughtful approach to marketing communication means we’re not wasting resources and that we’re, quite simply, treating people with the respect they deserve.

MYOB Glyn Higginson, head of online Data visualisation. In early 2018 we kicked off experimenting with a new visualisation tool to help us understand the impact of our digital marketing efforts through the acquisition funnel. This is because existing tools in the business had costly licences limiting access or we were unable to easily join the various data sets our marketers depend on. We are still at the beginning of this journey, with more data to add and visualisations to build; however, our marketers have greater visibility of key metric trends and can easily share insights. There has been an immediate change in the type of conversations the teams are having as data begins to be democratised.

A more thoughtful approach to marketing communication means we’re not wasting resources and that we’re, quite simply, treating people with the respect they deserve.

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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE Alexander Brisbane, marketing manager

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22 FEATURE

Up by the shoestrings Tracey Porter investigates the not-for-proďŹ t sector, and how its shoestring-budget marketing demonstrates innovative approaches to technology and engagement.

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n 1946 a seven-year-old girl from a village near C’eske, in former Czechoslovakia painted an artwork that an international business obtained for use in a direct mail greeting card drive. Sixty years later, the global greeting card campaign is still going strong and generating in excess of US$55 to 60 million for the brand annually. In 1987 an agency by the name of Chapter One Direct launched an integrated poster and print campaign offering jargon-free information on legal matters on behalf of a Switzerland-headquartered corporation in the environmental sector. Credited with reinventing face-to-face marketing, within two years the campaign helped double the brand’s income and resulted in more than 45,000 requests for copies of the printed brochure. Just eight years later a decision was made by a group of clever Austrian entrepreneurs to approach prospective clients in public places with the ambitious aim of getting 1000 people to sign a special banking form that would see them commit to paying a monthly sum to help guarantee the company’s future. Within 12 months the local arm of the animal welfare business found itself working alongside 13,000 new regular supporters, rising to 50,000 by the end of the next calendar year. These three campaigns have more in common than just unprecedented success and a European connection. Each was created on behalf of a not-for-proﬁt (NFP) client (Unicef, Greenpeace and WWF respectively). Each is listed on online fundraising hub SOFII, which showcases best practice innovation and inspiration, and each was achieved on a shoestring spend. According to the Productivity Commission, there are roughly 600,000 NFPs operating in Australia, or one for every 41 people. A large and diverse sector, its activities include everything from health, social services and education to sport, arts and culture, human and animal

NFP marketing must engage the consumer in a far more emotionally complex way. rights and religious practices. The Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC) says almost two-thirds of Australia’s registered charities (63 percent) are classified as small, with annual revenue of $250,000 or less. Of this majority, approximately one-third is very small, with annual revenue of less than $50,000. Just under half of Australia’s registered charities (44 percent) employ no staff and are entirely volunteer-run, the ACNC figures show. Yet although non-profits (sometimes referred to as mission-based organisations) are structured differently, the fundamental concepts required for success remain the same as with any other commercial enterprise. The key difference is that while for-profit businesses usually attempt to market their offering with the aid of healthy media budgets and multiple marketing channels, NFP businesses are forced to try and raise funds by connecting with would-be donors on an emotional level with little to no funds for advertising. NFP fundraising specialist Greg Bechly, whose agency March One has helped raise in excess of $102 million for NFPs over the past three years, says when it comes to key marketing principles, the singular and most obvious difference between commercial advertisers and those in the NFP sector is the product. Bechly says consumers in the commercial sector are directly rewarded by the purchase of a product or service. That is, they derive a direct and personal benefit from it. In NFP, however, by ‘purchasing’ the product – i.e. giving a donation – consumers benefit emotionally, but the

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physical and real beneﬁt of their purchase goes to someone else, he says. “This means that, in order to generate a response, NFP marketing must engage the consumer in a far more emotionally complex way to ensure that people feel rewarded enough after making a donation.” A great example of this was March One’s own Cheese for Change campaign on behalf of White Ribbon Australia, which exceeded expectations in both participation and funds. The event asked Australians to create a ‘cheese platter that matters’. They were encouraged to gather friends, family or co-workers together, raising much needed donations for White Ribbon’s programs to prevent men’s violence against women. Held over four days, it raised more than $36,000 from 192 individual events around the country, indicating a signiﬁcant uptake for the inaugural event. Austin Begg, the chairman of full-service brand design agency Traffic, whose management team has worked with entities including Heart Foundation, Nutrition Australia, Cancer Council and Playgroup Australia, agrees there

is little difference between the marketing needs of NFPs and their commercial counterparts. Begg says the brand logo/identity, what they stand for and how they engage customers are fundamental to both, with the only difference relating to culture and organisational structure. “Most NFPs strive to live within their allocated budget or government grant, with only mild pressure to retain and build membership, and promote engagement with services etc. Whereas for-profit companies and brands are continually under pressure to achieve incremental gains of new customers and profits against specific goals. “Consequently, for-profit companies are forced to be more innovative to differentiate themselves and are more willing to invest in media and customer experience to increase ROI and shareholder value.” Alex France, the managing director of strategic/creative agency Vitamin X – whose agency has worked with NFP clients including the Australian Foundation for Disability, TechCollect, the National Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation – argues that, unlike commercial organisations, NFPs usually have more layers to work through with CEOs and boards getting involved in areas that would normally be handled by marketing. This means that bringing all the stakeholders along on the journey is part of the process, he says. While it would be nice to think professional accountability and transparency remain a core value of each agency – no matter the client – the fact remains that budget consideration is always a key component of working with NFPs. Consequently, agencies and clients will each employ a different approach when it comes to ensuring bang for buck. France, whose agency boasts a dynamic pricing model incorporating pro bono percentages, says while most NFP clients request their agencies to do ‘more with less’, ultimately they require the same breakthrough ideas, production efficiency and on-time delivery required by for-profit clients. France says, generally speaking, NFPs’

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24 FEATURE

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It’s not a case that shareholders will be disappointed. People will actually die. Environments will be harmed.

@marketingmag

clients are more risk averse than corporate clients. This is usually owing to a mix of internal politics (fundraising versus marketing), herd instincts, budgets fragmenting across multiple channels and projects, and a natural tendency to keep doing what’s worked in the past. Begg and Bechly both concur. Bechly says there are real consequences to falling short in funding. “It’s not a case that shareholders will be disappointed. People will actually die. Environments will be harmed. Animals will go extinct etc.” Begg believes this can be attributed to the inability of some NFP boards to attract high calibre management and marketing professionals with commercial savvy. “Most NFP boards are made up of ﬁrst class people with good credentials and strong community connections, but they lack the experience and knowledge to be abreast of the latest trends and competitive forces that may be disrupting their NFP. The real challenge facing many bigger NFPs is the problem of gaining consensus on major decisions from NFP business models that are built on membership, state boards and a national board.” As the above examples prove, however, there are many NFPs that recognise the importance of being distinctive and standing out in order to get the most beneﬁt from the budget. For March One, the process usually involves seeking engagement and buy-in from the charity and interviewing its supporters. “This helps uncover genuine insights, and means we all – client and agency alike – know why we are making decisions, rather than going through the ‘think and feel’. What’s more, there is strong data collection and measurement in many NFPs as a result of many decades of direct response advertising. This in turn helps determine target segments that are

much more likely to respond – resulting in efficiencies on media spend,” Bechly says. There is also a trend in newer charities, that don’t have the legacy of traditional direct mail, to embrace new methods and take a more agile and nimble approach to their marketing. Begg says the most obvious starting point for NFP brands to achieve cut-through is by determining what the NFP stands for and then creating a logo. He says Traffic transformed the Playgroup Australia brand identity and messaging three years ago after discovering the brand had seven different state logotypes and identities. “Uniting the state boards and members was a priority and the new logotype and messaging has proven to be successful. Other NFPs are realising that their logo and their messaging is probably out of date, but some do not have the funds to transform and update.” As NFPs are driven largely by budget, digital is usually their channel of choice when looking to engage customers and get the donor dollars flooding in. Global environmental giant Greenpeace offers perhaps the best example of how to use technology to achieve cut-through after it partnered with a team of scientists to create a live feed tracking whales with GPS (global positioning system) technology. The campaign, called the Great Whale Trail, encouraged people to make personal fundraising pages and ask their networks for donations. The campaign was a great success with over 5000 personal pages being created. A second example saw a New York-based animal rescue shelter use dating app Tinder as a way to match its dogs with potential owners. Tinder profiles were created for each dog and if a match swiped right they would get messages with information about how they could adopt the dog. If the Tinder match wasn’t able to adopt, they were encouraged to donate, foster a pet or volunteer to walk the dogs. The organisation started by posting 10 dog profiles and got 2700 matches in the first week. Australian firms have also had success with this approach. M&C Saatchi partnered with adult film studio Digital Playground in a Game of Thrones porn parody. In the middle of the action, the female star stops, turns to the

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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26 FEATURE

predominantly male viewers and gives a practical demonstration on her male co-star of how to check for testicular cancer. Viewers were then directed to the Blue Ball Foundation, an Australian awareness charity. The campaign achieved 1.5 million-plus views in its first four weeks and has now prompted more than 402,000 website visits. Traffic’s Austin Begg says creating and integrating digital technology to the business engine is always a priority at his agency. The problem is many NFPs simply do not have the funds to build or rebuild the websites that would best suit their needs. Consequently, they tend to lag behind the for-profit sector companies, which can afford the latest technologies. “The same digital rules and tools apply to NFPs as they do to for-profit brand websites, apps and social media. First, develop and commit to a bold strategy to which everyone commits. Second, the NFP board must activate and monitor every touch point to gain clarity of message and objectives. The increasing digitisation of the customer journey and customer experience suggests NFPs must embrace all digital technologies to survive.” Bechly says a great landing page and digital portal to answer supporter questions and handle registration and enquiries, together with a shareable social strategy to get the word out can prove advantageous when it comes to attracting consumer spend. He says Cheese for Change was a good example of a social/digital-led event. As such it was conceived and designed as a digital program, meaning awareness could spread across social channels, and all registrations and event information was handled online. This also means that as the event grows, it is truly scalable for the charity. The most common mistake made by NFP marketers is to think in terms of channels, i.e. direct mail, digital and face-to-face, rather than the actual marketing goals, Bechly says. Major opportunities are missed by not considering that you can actually change and create new products within the NFP sector. “As an agency we love creating campaigns and promoting our clients. We also thoroughly enjoy the process of working with clients to create new products. It’s in this space that the greatest opportunity lies. Digital offers enormous opportunities to all areas of marketing, be it commercial or NFP. However, the product

has to work within the digital space. Simply taking what worked when you sent letters to old ladies and putting this online isn’t going to work. “You need to create fundraising products speciﬁcally for the digital space. That is, events or programs that start in digital, can be shared in digital and can scale easily. That is the Holy Grail.” Many NFPs feel they have to use all social media channels to have an impact, Bechly argues, but blindly posting promotional content on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat because they are free or low cost can do more harm than good. “Think about your target audience. Not necessarily the kinds of people that support you now, but who you are wanting to be your future supporters. They will consume media and have different expectations of digital performance. So it’s very much a case of using what your target market uses, rather than what is easiest for you to use.” France says digital blinkers can also be an issue when an over-focus on tweaks driven by tracking and analytics leads to not enough attention being paid to serious experimentation using distinct appeals and techniques. France, who in previous roles worked on campaigns for Amnesty International, the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health and Sydney City Mission, says Vitamin X prides itself on being “technology agnostic” when it comes to the advice it offers to NFP clients. He says well-reasoned strategic and creative thinking can add exponential value to an NFP’s investment, as can honest and authentic storytelling. Bland work can effectively waste it, he says. This is what he refers to as a ‘tragic’ scenario. “We reject the idea of doing something just because it is new, funky or because everyone else is doing it. Technology is nothing without smart strategy and cut-through creative. When I see NFPs investing in brand awareness or client acquisition campaigns and then rolling out something generic, bland or unclear, it hurts. It’s bad for the client, their clients and the NFP industry as a whole. “Stop being sheep. Everyone has jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. Saturation helps no one. Go for quality of contact, quality of relationship, not quantity.”

marketingmag.com.au

Major opportunities are missed by not considering that you can actually change and create new products within NFP.

MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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PRESENTS

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FREE D LOA N W DO

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Voice of Industry Series Australia and New Zealand

WHAT DO CUSTOMERS SEEK WHEN MAKING PURCHASING DECISIONS? DOWNLOAD THE FREE REPORTS AT

MARKETINGMAG.COM.AU/OFFER/VOI-REPORTS

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Research Now SSI is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading global provider of first-party consumer and professional data based on extensive, proprietary market research panels. For more information, please visit researchnow.com | surveysampling.com

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28 INFOGRAPHIC

THE GOLDFISH EPIDEMIC?

REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT… Make sure your skim reader picks up on your key points by hammering them home over and over and over. However, be careful not to saturate: ● diversify and repurpose your content with different formats

In the age of instant gratiﬁcation and mobile everything, attention spans are understandably thin. Here are a few key tips to creating kickass content – keep it simple, stupid.

PAYING ATTENTION? Attention spans are plummeting. The average human attention span is 8 seconds, compared to 12 seconds in 2000

BE INSTANT The quality of your content won’t matter if your audience GETS BORED waiting for it to load.

– Microsoft.

––––––––––

81% of educated people skim instead of reading deliberately when online – The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

Every one-second delay in loading a website = 7% loss in conversion

––––––––––

People only remember 20% of what they read without visuals

More than three seconds to load

– Infographics – why you need them.

––––––––––

It takes 50 milliseconds to form a website’s ﬁrst impression

Slow loading websites cost the US ecommerce market more than $500 billion annually.

– Human-Oriented Technology Lab at Carleton University.

Source: hostingfacts

40% leave the website.

● take advantage of multiple distribution streams ● use smart retargeting to get people to see your content as much as possible, and ● remember the rule of seven – ‘people need to see your offer at least seven times before they really pay attention’.

PICK YOUR SPOT To ensure your content gets as much exposure as possible, it’s good to know where your audience hangs out. Twitter – 157 MILLION daily active users – Recode Facebook – 1.45 BILLION daily active users Instagram – 300 MILLION daily active users WhatsApp – 300 MILLION daily active users, and Snapchat – 191 MILLION daily active users. Source: Statistica

MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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THE EXCEPTION: For whatever reason, our attention spans when READING EMAILS have actually INCREASED in the past few years. The average time spent reading an email increased by 7% between 2011 & 2016:

7% Source: Litmus

2011 – 10.4 seconds to 2016 – 11.1 seconds Mobile email opens rose from 20% in 2011 to 55% in 2016.

PRECIOUS SECONDS How do we maximise our wealth

PREROLL

(1.3 seconds)

YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and even TV have become entranced by the snackable ad spot. Here are some tips for squeezing your seconds:

of extra read time in emails? Refrain from clickbait – subscribers are less likely to pay attention when they sense your subject line is misrepresenting the content.

–––––––––– Make it mobile friendly – mobile readers are more likely to ignore, delete and even unsubscribe from emails not optimised for mobile.

–––––––––– Make your pictures count – too many make your emails slow. Try to use images sparingly and choose ones that will draw as much attention as possible.

–––––––––– Keep an eye out – if your links don’t take someone where they say they’re going, it's most likely that email interaction is over. Quadruple check that your links aren’t broken before they get distributed.

● six-second ads have more impact when used to reinforce a message already delivered by a longer ad ● six-second ads perform the best when aired as the ﬁnal spot before the content returns ● 30-second ads are seen as less enjoyable and even less appropriate in short-form video environments ● if only one length is available: 15-second spots are almost twice as effective as 30- and six-second spots in isolation, and ● shorter ads engage higher with younger audiences (obviously). Source: FreeWheel Council for Premium Video and Realeyes

Source: Litmus

SIX-SECOND STORY With a duration distilled down to barely a breath, how could anyone tell a compelling story in six seconds? Tease a longer form ad to come – use the smaller format to create excitement and add context to your longer ads.

–––––––––– Develop a series – in the age of binge TV, developing curiosity investment can pay if the arrival is satisfying enough.

–––––––––– Know the limits – constraints produce creativity. Compressing a story into its ﬁnest points may just simplify your message in a way it needs. Source: Think with Google

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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30 CONTENT PARTNER: FORRESTER

Incentivising great CX: myths busted

irms that want to compete on customer experience (CX) often fall prey to the dazzling allure of ‘shortcuts’. But relying on these simplistic approaches for improving CX makes customer experiences worse. A good example is the question of whether to tie employee performance on CX metrics (e.g. satisfaction, Net Promoter Score) to monetary incentives (e.g. variable pay). Forrester gets this question a lot, and our answer is that it’s a risky shortcut that often undermines CX performance instead. When CX metrics drive employees’ variable pay, both CX and employee morale will suffer. That’s because employees will ask, beg or guilt customers into giving them high ratings in surveys, which is a rude awakening for any customer who will now wonder whether an employee genuinely cared about them or was after a high survey score. What’s more, ﬁrms that hold employees accountable for goals that they cannot achieve, demotivate them – for example, where processes, policies and tools in place contribute to low CX scores. Linking accountability for CX metrics to variable pay also obstructs a ﬁrm’s CX efforts. First, it takes valuable

“A CX team of a large company spends more than 1000 work hours a year on policing, optimising and governing the system.”

Maxie Schmidt and Sam Stern are principal analysts at Forrester.

time away from initiatives that make organisations more customer-centric. Forrester estimates that a CX team of a large company spends more than 1000 work hours a year on policing, optimising and governing the system. For example, they argue with employees who want to exclude specific survey responses from the calculation, or they spend time confirming that employees didn’t pressure customers into giving higher scores. Second, it handcuffs CX teams. For example, CX teams run into limits for changing existing customer surveys. After all, any change could invalidate the baseline used to calculate the incentive payout – and we have even seen CX teams that held off on making significant CX improvements because the resulting score increase may have exceeded the incentive payout budget. If you are wondering why so many firms still reach for this shortcut, Forrester has identified myths that explain it. Organisations that want to be successful with their CX efforts should avoid the incentive shortcut. Instead, they must put in the hard work required to make it simple for employees to deliver better CX. Here are four ways to get started:

marketingmag.com.au

Incentivising CX initiatives is a shortcut to damaged relationships with customers and employees, say Maxie Schmidt and Sam Stern. Here’s why.

1. Deﬁne metrics that measure whether delivered experiences meet or exceed customers’ expectations Map your customers’ journeys and use feedback and qualitative research to identify customers’ expectations along the journey. Use these insights to deﬁne the right CX metrics that measure whether journeys deliver on CX expectations. 2. Identify what effective employee behaviours look like Comb through feedback comments from customers for details about what they liked and disliked about their experiences. Supplement that with qualitative follow-up interviews with customers if you can. Then work with

MARKETING MARKETINGAUGUST FEBRUARY | SEPTEMBER | MARCH 2015 2018

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“Employees will ask, beg or guilt customers into giving them high ratings in surveys, which is a rude awakening for any customer.”

@marketingmag

MYTH

REALITY

SIGNAL

Monetary incentives show that we can take CX seriously.

At best, they show CX is as important as other business priorities. At worst, that ﬁrms are pretending to take CX seriously.

CONTROL

We need a set of rules and monetary incentives to drive customer-centric behaviours.

Rules stiﬂe employee autonomy, and customer-centric behaviours are hard to codify as rules anyway.

EFFECTIVENESS

Incentives change behaviour, which proves that they work.

Incentives always change behaviour in unintended and undesired ways.

MOTIVATION

Employees are energised and motivated by monetary incentives.

Money is less of a motivator to employees than factors like progress, purpose, autonomy and connection.

RETOOLING

We can ﬁne-tune the incentive system to get rid of gaming.

Employees will always game a system of monetary incentives.

employees in the front and back office to identify the speciﬁc behaviours that help improve CX quality perceptions.

beyond. The more management is involved with personal notes, shout-outs etc the better.

3. Give employees ample and prompt feedback on their behaviours Measure experience quality on an ongoing basis. Build that insight into targeted micro-learning modules that help employees practise their customer-centric behaviours.

You know that you have made delivering great CX simple for employees when employees stop chasing scores and instead use CX metrics and associated customer comments to check their progress on the behaviours they know are critical to delivering better CX.

4. Regularly acknowledge employees for their CX performance Use CX metrics and customer and peer feedback to identify good and great employee performance. Set up events or special treats for employees who go above and

Forrester is a Marketing content partner – a leading organisation with which we collaborate to bring exclusive content to readers. Read more from Forrester analysts at marketingmag.com.au

THE THESIMPLICITY CONNECT ISSUE ISSUE

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32 INTERVIEW

Six sells t June’s World of Unmissable event, consumer psychologist and Thinkerbell founder Adam Ferrier delivered an introductory presentation on six-second advertisements and ﬁlms, as well as other marketing comms that deliver impact in limited amounts of engagement and time. Why six seconds? “Very often it’s all you have,” he said. “Every single piece of creative we create is all about trying to change people’s behaviour,” said Ferrier, and there are only two ways to do it: increase their motivation, or make it easier for them to do it. “Motivation is creating a desire that someone is likely to act upon. Ease is around creating mental and physical availability, and making it easier for your brand to be chosen over the other.” For those in the audience, he offered a reality check: “99.9 percent of the time your consumer does not give a ﬂying rats about your brand. They don’t care, they’re thinking about something else

completely.” This is the ‘passive consideration’ stage. “Then something happens. There’s a trigger. The trigger doesn’t occur for your brand. The trigger normally occurs for the category: I need a drink, I want a new car, I’m hungry, I need nappies, I want a home loan.” The role of 99.9 percent of communications, he said, is to get the brand and message stuck into their head at this stage. “What we need to do from most of our media is grab mental availability, so the brand sticks into their head when the category needs get hit and then, hopefully, to make it easier for them to buy your brand over somebody else.” “Six seconds – or less – is probably enough to do that,” he said. “If you constantly want to be in their head, you can take a second and a half, you could take a few milliseconds.” Ferrier paraphrased Byron Sharp’s recommended use and spread of an annual media budget. “You should take your media budget, divide it by 12, and spend

approximately one twelfth of your media budget every month. It’s not overly complicated. “That’s how to make things easier. Be in people’s heads. Create saliency. Whenever the category needs get triggered, your brand is available.” Marketing speaks with Ferrier about how short and simple communications ﬁt into marketing, and what’s going on in the six-second landscape.

marketingmag.com.au

Marketing speaks with Adam Ferrier about six-second ads – how they ﬁt into a world of measurement, why they work, and when.

Marketing: What are the strengths and weaknesses of long and short form content? Adam Ferrier: There’s a fair amount of evidence that lots of advertising works via what’s roughly called ‘low involvement processing’, where you don’t have to be consciously engaged with the communications in order for the communications to have an effect. Marketers, I guess at some level, have known this for a long time. It’s about getting impressions in the consumer’s mind. And so, back in the day when media was very, very cheap, most ads were 60 seconds

MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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@marketingmag

99.9 percent of the time your consumer does not give a ďŹ&#x201A;ying rats about your brand. They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re thinking about something else completely.

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34 INTERVIEW

Sensational seconds

Short form videos and outdoor creative that deliver a message in seconds.

f Optus 4G Plus: ‘Ever wonder what life is like at the speed of Bolt?’ The six-second YouTube teaser promoting Optus’ 4G Plus network enlisted the talent of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

TThe High Diver

marketingmag.com.au

The short ﬁlm by Mother New York creative agency, directed by Lisa Gunning, delivers a strong message about global warming and Los Angeles’ water conservation issues.

SKFC Hot and Spicy Hong Kong The series of images replaced ﬁre in photos of a spaceship, a rocket-powered racing car and a group of imitation Power Rangers with images of the food chain’s spicy fried chicken. The campaign won two Gold Lions at Cannes.

TSnickers: ‘Hot Mess’ The six-second commercial was one of a range that aired on Fox’s broadcast of the 2017 Teen Choice Awards. Old Spice was another brand to run a six-second ad during the broadcast, and Fox soon began selling six-second spots on NFL broadcasts.

SMcDonald’s ‘Follow the Arches’ The fast food chain’s golden archers are so iconic, they need not be displayed in their entire form. The series of out-of-home billboards cropped the logo to direct passers-by to their nearest outlet. This campaign was a Grand Prix winner in the Outdoor Lions category at Cannes 2018.

MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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@marketingmag

long and they were effective. Then, TV advertising was able to chop that down to 30 and to 15, and both of those are effective as well. What has been interesting with digital video and where that’s heading, is stretching how short an ad can be versus the level of effectiveness it has. If you take on board the idea that lots of advertising works via low involvement processing, then the ad that we’re seeing can be pretty short in order to still have an impact. In an analogue media world, these conversations would not have been had, because it was just really hard to have an ad under 15 seconds play out and then be researched. Apart from a few rare ‘stunty’ kinds of thing, they weren’t the norm. It feels like technology is catching up to the science a little bit and starting to investigate – and it’s certainly still early days – but it looks like shorter form ads can have similar effectiveness at doing a certain job in the communications mix than longer form ads. Can short form ads work on their own, or should they form part of a media mix? Byron Sharp talks about laws of marketing, and I still can’t quite get my head around something as complicated and nebulous as marketing and human behaviour having hard and fast laws that apply under all conditions. The context of every marketing challenge is so different. It depends on what your current brand is, who’s consuming your brand, the relationship they have with it, and so on. So, I wouldn’t necessarily subscribe to saying there’s one way to do things, but

what I do ﬁnd useful is the whole concept of people having passive consideration for your brand when they’re not really in the market and active consideration for your brand when they’re evaluating it. After that, it becomes a matter of looking at ways of building retention, where once they’ve purchased they want to keep on purchasing your brand, and dividing things into those three clusters. I think the concept of low involvement processing, or topping up salience in the mind is probably most effective at the passive consideration stage, which is where people spend 99 percent of their time – when most people, most of the time are not thinking about you. Do you lean towards the long form or short form format? I lean towards a mix of both. One of the things that’s troubled me is I’ve always believed that action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action, and if you can get people to act or interact or talk or pass on a certain message... You know, you can loosely call that ‘fame-based’ communications that generates its own sense of momentum in the media. That’s the Holy Grail, but I think in and of itself it’s hard to do that continually, day in, day out, en masse. That kind of communications needs to be supported with doing the simple stuff and maintaining saliency for as long as possible, through being always on or always visible or audible to the consumer. So, a lot of the time, having a combination of the two seems to work well.

Many believe attention spans are declining. Are these short form communications more likely to work as we try to secure the attention of a disengaging audience, or has there always been potential? I don’t think there’s much evidence to suggest we have a lowering attention span. I think our attention spans are pretty much what they’ve always been, but it’s a pretty hard thing to measure. What’s interesting is there’s so much data available now. It’s kind of like data is a little bell that keeps ringing and getting your attention, and then we keep on focusing on optimising on stuff that has a direct response or a measurable response. This leads us into one form of communications, which is responsedriven communications, where you can measure if it’s working and who’s responding or not. Then we try to spend a lot of our time optimising that, potentially at the expense of broadcast communications that are harder to measure. The value of broadcast communications is in maintaining saliency with the mass market – it feels like that is being forgotten about with the obsession over data and performance-based media. But this is a complicated thing. You can get simple and wonderful into six seconds or less. What’s interesting is that everyone’s well and truly aware of the value of static media, but also, where outdoor as a concept is heading, and how it can be even more contextually relevant and create value for the consumer in current, contemporary, relevant situations is interesting.

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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36 SURVEY PARTNER: RESEARCH NOW SSI

VOICE OF INDUSTRY: RETAIL HOW DO YOU PREFER TO RESEARCH BRANDS AND PRODUCTS?

D AN N R IO A SH E FA OTW FO

ES RI OR E U OC IQ GR ND L A

S E E RE TUR A AR I W W N ME UR RD IY HA ND D HOND F A A

Online search

30%

20%

36%

31%

Voice search

Social media

Recommendation

Catalogue

19%

13%

10%

In-store

48%

39%

43%

No preference

HOW DO YOU PREFER TO MAKE PURCHASES?

D AN N IO AR SH TWE A F O FO

ES RI OR E U OC IQ GR ND L A

ES RE E AR ITU AR W W N ME UR RD IY HA ND D HOND F A A

Online

18%

11%

46%

10%

Voice

14%

Social media

23%

In-store

70%

79%

No preference

MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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Marketing and Research Now SSI have teamed up to bring you industry-speciﬁc Voice-of-Customer survey results. We’ll look at automotive, travel and more. Each survey samples 1000 people in Australia and 600 in New Zealand, adjusted to be representative of the age, gender and location make-up of each country. This article contains top-level results for Australia. For full reports visit marketingmag.com.au/offer/VOI-reports

CS NI

, N IES TIO B A B S HOECREGIFT R ND A

, NT E M IN Y TA LIT TES R TE ITA IVI EN OSP ACT H ND A

HOW DO YOU PREFER TO RESEARCH BRANDS AND PRODUCTS?

Online search

53%

47%

55%

Voice search

Social media

Recommendation

Catalogue

In-store

25%

26%

13%

No preference

13%

12%

RO CT E L

, NT E NM AI ITY ES T R L T TE PITA TIVI N E OS AC H ND A

HOW DO YOU PREFER TO MAKE PURCHASES?

, N IES TIO CS B I B A S N HOECREGIFT RO T R ND EC EL A

Online

24%

29%

36%

Voice

Social media

In-store

65%

55%

43%

No preference

12%

15%

DIGITAL VERSUS PHYSICAL Online and in-store are the most common preferences for researching and purchasing items.

TOP THREE reasons for shopping online (all retail categories)

1. Convenience 2. Price 3. Product range

TOP THREE reasons for shopping in-store (all retail categories)

1. Product range 2. Service 3. Convenience

Research Now SSI is the world’s leading global provider of ﬁrst-party consumer and professional data based on extensive, proprietary market research panels. Around this core asset of opted-in, managed data, the company has built innovative data services and solutions that bring the voice of the individual to the entire marketing spectrum, from research to marketing to advertising. For more information, please visit researchnow.com | surveysampling.com

44786_36-37_infographic SSi .indd 37

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38 CONTRIBUTED

Writing great copy: 20 lessons This October, copywriting consultancy Action Words celebrates 20 years in business. To mark the occasion, founder Frank Chamberlin outlines 20 top copywriting truths.

Plus, if you are tempted to review and rework too much, it is the deadline that liberates you. In recent years I have realised I am no longer writing for readers – I’m writing for scanners. For online especially, good copy helps the scanner get through the content quickly. It captures the message easily without the need for any second-guessing.

The best way to get started on a piece of writing is to begin! I do not believe in writer’s block. And I especially don’t like that old excuse, ‘I just can’t get started’. Often it is only when you get writing that you work out what you want to say.

The most engaging writing reads as if the writer is sitting there talking to you. Use an active voice and, where possible, write in the ﬁrst person. Remember, you are a human, not a robot – so let your human voice come through in your writing.

Plain English rules the roost when it comes to quality content writing. No matter what you are writing, it must be in plain English for comprehension and engagement.

Deadlines: the worst element of a copywriter’s life. Life is hectic; multiple deadlines – all looming within elbow room of each other – can be intense. You can almost hear multiple clocks ticking, as they stalk you to the ﬁnish line.

Deadlines: the best element of a copywriter’s life. Without them, there is no impetus. I saw a cartoon the other day with God taking six days to create the world because he spent the ﬁrst ﬁve procrastinating! The deadline gets the adrenaline going and keyboard churning.

A ﬁne vocabulary is of limited use in business today, with all our readers scanning. People are multitasking and they want the message short and sharp. ‘You’re not writing a university thesis – so don’t give me words I have to think about.’

marketingmag.com.au

irst let me say, being a full-time freelance writer is a great way to live. The work is always mentally stimulating and different, you work from the comfort of your own home office, you wear absolutely whatever you want and a teapot is always within easy reach. Here are the top 20 truths I have learned about online and offline content writing.

Frank Chamberlin is founder, copywriter and writing trainer at Action Words.

Writing shorter sentences is crucial to being a better business writer. And it is equally vital to vary your sentence length. These two structural elements will give your writing the character that makes it interesting and the cadence that makes it easy to read.

Engaging headlines are essential (that includes subheads and subject lines). With so many people multitasking and scanning, compelling headlines are critical as they provide stopping points for the eyes. The subconscious is the writer’s most treasured friend. Give it free rein for imaginative play. Words, phrases and a narrative can form almost effortlessly when the subconscious is allowed to do its thing. But the subconscious only works if you give it time. You need to prepare carefully and fully. Get out as many ideas as possible, then do something else for at least 24 hours. Then, when you sit down to write, the subconscious will have the words ready for you.

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Review, review, review – and don’t be afraid to rewrite, for rewriting is the essence of all good online and offline business writing.

Never write and send to the client on the same day. Check it again in the morning and then send it. It’s true that when you’ve been working on a piece all day, you sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. Sleep on it and you’ll be amazed at what you spot or enhance the next morning.

13 @marketingmag

You are a better writer if you use the tools that are readily available. The ‘ﬁnd’ function in Word and Google Docs alerts you to overuse of particular words, the thesaurus can provide a helping hand, Flesch-Kincaid scores check your readability and the Hemingway app can check your writing for clarity.

Most clients have way too many reviewers today. Some reviewers can seriously improve the end result, but many of them don’t know what they are doing. They are totally guided by subjective judgement and think only in terms of what they like. If reviewers want the work to be written the way they would write it, then they have to write it themselves.

Some clients engage a copywriter, but they don’t actually want an outsider to do the job. If you want to write it yourself, go right ahead. Otherwise, let the professional writer do what he or she is being paid to do.

Graphics versus copy: it is great to work with excellent graphic designers who really add value. They understand communication and they focus on reaching the audience. Unfortunately, too many graphic designers only think about making the page look pretty.

SIX SIMPLE RULES FOR ALL YOUR WRITING AT WORK: 1. write shorter sentences 2. only use words you know your audience understands 3. keep your paragraphs brief 4. get to the point quickly 5. allow for plenty of white space, and 6. when you are all done, cut by 50 percent (your readers will thank you). Waffles are nice to eat, but terrible to read. Every content writer must look carefully at their writing and cut out the waffle.

Jargon is a killer. Nothing will make a reader switch off faster than writing that’s full of jargon, acronyms and ﬂuff.

No writing assignment is insurmountable. If you hit a roadblock, maybe you need to do some more research. Do you really know what you want to say? Don’t sit there complaining about the roadblock. Do something else for ﬁve minutes and come back with fresh eyes.

Marketing is proud media partner of the DM Forum. Founded and hosted by Chamberlin, the Forum is a quarterly gathering of Melbourne marketers. Visit dmforum.com.au for information.

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BIZARRE BEGINNINGS TO COMPLEX SUCCESS

s the executive customer experience director at AKQA in Melbourne, Tracy Brown’s role is to prepare organisations for the future. AKQA is a complex agency that delivers simplicity for its clients. Unlike a standard digital agency, its functions also include marketing automation, artificial intelligence and research and development. The campaigns it runs are martech or data led, and creative and design are interlinked. Brown explains that her role as executive customer experience director is focused on organisational design, helping clients to work out how to structure their own teams. So far, she has completely redefined experiences for healthcare, finance and tertiary education. “The end game is to deliver experiences, and those experiences are really complicated. So, we will design what we think the future experience is, but the hard work is figuring out how to get there. We have to help them understand how to support technology, but they also need to change their teams and their capabilities to be able to deliver on it.”

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After a truly bizarre start to working life and learning resilience by throwing herself into complicated digital projects, Tracy Brown found her calling in ‘making things that work’. Michelle Keomany learns just how complicated that can be.

Simplicity is when it’s inherently clear what its function is – something that’s so clear that you don’t even need to think about how it works.

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@marketingmag THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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Brown’s top ﬁve tips on how to KISS Instead of being overwhelmed by the complex infrastructure that supports a simple experience, whip it all into shape by building a live service blueprint everyone can work from.

Practise the art of simplicity by explaining a complex law or academic theory to an impatient ﬁve-year-old or a disinterested relative in terms they can understand.

Think of delivering simple experiences as a sleight of hand – customers don’t want to know how the magic happens or how complex the trick is.

Deﬁne simplicity in a way your stakeholders can understand and convert those descriptions to a checklist you can use in every review.

Remind yourself that innovation and simplicity are one and the same today. If you can’t deliver simplicity, you will stay in the mainstream.

This is the way that Brown talks about everything, like it’s no biggie, when in fact it is not only big, it’s enormous. Throughout her career, she has amassed invaluable experience, working across all functions in the digital sphere – designer, front-end developer, copywriter, UX (user experience) designer, Flash game developer and campaign creative. This has given her incredible insights into organisational structure and managing projects and people. Brown speaks with sharpness, consideration and dry wit. She is originally from Cape Town, South Africa and it’s amusing to learn that her career started in 1996 as a result of dropping out of an extremely niche postgraduate degree in directing surrealist theatre. She laughs, “My poor parents, they funded it as well… Crazy! “The way it worked in Cape Town is that you had to study a diploma of higher education along with your postgrad,” she explains. “So, they give you these practical courses, but that means it’s just so overwhelming. You’re

doing academic stuff and you’re having to learn how to be a teacher at the same time.” She realised how ridiculous it was and dropped out after four months, but then didn’t know what to do next. “I did the most random jobs, one of them was directing a barbershop quartet. It was a freelance job that the university provided because they felt sorry for me as I had left my degree. And I just thought, ‘what the hell am I doing?’ “Part of my degree was fine art and I always struggled about whether I should do art or theatre… I went back to design and art and I saw that there was what was DTP in those days, desktop publishing – a course on how to do Photoshop, Freehand and Quark. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a good skill’, so I learned how to do that.” After a period working in print and garment design (which she knew nothing about), Brown moved to London in 1998 where she did even more random jobs before realising that to make her design skills more relevant, and to actually get better jobs, she had to learn how to code. It’s this natural drive to make things relevant and effective that comes through in everything she does (despite deviations into niches like surrealist theatre). “I wanted to make a thing that worked so the satisfaction of being able to design something, code something and watch it function was the best thing ever. And from there it has just refined.” Brown started to hit her stride, finding work purely because very few people could design and code at the same time – and that’s essentially what web design was. She explains her experiences of being in the middle of the dotcom boom. “It was like a playground, because the people who got involved with digital in those days were entrepreneurs, innovators, people who had multiple skills… I had to think about what businesses needed from an early stage. During that whole dotcom boom you had to work, you had to hustle, you had to explain the value of digital.” Brown started as a web designer and developer at start-up and new media agency Advocacy Online, working

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42 PROFILE

To make her design skills more relevant, and to actually get better jobs, she had to learn how to code.

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You had to work, you had to hustle, you had to explain the value of digital.

@marketingmag

her way up to the role of creative director. Advocacy Online created an award-winning online piece of software called e-Activist that allowed charities to create letter writing campaigns, targeting politicians and other local decisionmakers. The client list was vast, with more than 60 charities and pharmaceutical companies across the UK and Canada, including WWF, Oxfam and Schering-Plough. But she realised this wasn’t the right path for her. “I wasn’t interested in making something appealing. I was more interested in making something work.” She went on to work for herself, contracting as a UI (user interface) and Flash animator for agencies and brands such as OgilvyOne, The Telegraph online and Agency Republic. Not putting barriers around what she does and doesn’t do has worked in Brown’s favour. “I ended up being able to do a lot of the work that other designers weren’t able to do because I had come from that background… I think I was at Ogilvy at the time and I just started to naturally do UX without even knowing I was doing it. Drawing up ﬂows, understanding research, running research sessions, creating wireframes, marking them up for devs. Someone said, ‘Oh you’re a UX-er’ and I said, ‘Oh, what do you mean?’ And then they explained what it was and I said ‘Oh yeah, that’s what I’m doing! I’m a UX-er!’” She explains that UX is essentially design strategy; it’s the beginnings of strategy for designers, and it became all she was interested in. “I lost interest in visual design, I just moved entirely into UX and kept jumping into really ambitious projects. I got great experience working on the American Express account, building really complicated experiences like online banking and then I decided to take a job at the National Lottery.” At that time, the National Lottery had the biggest ecommerce platform in the southern hemisphere, making £100 million a week. “It was just crazy amounts with really complicated systems and a lot of legislation around lotteries… And I took a contract role to build and design their system. And that was amazing because I was working with really technically oriented people who didn’t understand design nor were

interested in it and working with old school designers and trying to connected the dots between them and old school technologists. And it was the best experience.” It’s these somewhat organic opportunities that Brown embraces that enrich her ability to guide her teams and clients through incredibly complicated waters. She can’t speak more strongly about the importance of not only ‘giving it a crack’ but understanding that with these experiences comes hard work. “That’s why I always say to everyone, you have to just jump into really complicated things. You have to, every time – if you want to progress in your career, take risks: do the hardest thing. But know that if you take that risk on-board you have to work like a bastard, you have to work really fast and keep your eyes open. “And that’s the point. You never really know, you just have to give it a crack. And so many people don’t want to do that. A lot of people don’t progress because they either

Brown’s top ﬁve tips for young women in digital and tech Always jump at new opportunities by asking yourself ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ The answer is usually ‘nothing I can’t survive’.

Don’t mistake resilience for having no feelings. Resilience is just a survival instinct you develop when you have recovered from difﬁcult situations a few times and know you can do it again.

Remember to pay it forward. There is always a younger woman who can beneﬁt from your belief in her.

Follow Cindy Gallop and Professor Michelle Ryan. You need both rebels and academics to help you see all the possibilities.

Don’t listen to advice that tells you women need to change how they communicate to be successful in business. It’s time to change how business works so it allows for more diverse communication styles.

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If you take that risk on-board you have to work like a bastard, you have to work really fast and keep your eyes open. implications for technology, for the organisation, all the organisational work I do.” Brown says that one of the most important qualities she has to have is empathy. In a way that goes much further than understanding what customers want. “I mean understanding how to break down roadmaps of work that are going to suit technologists and designers. “Because CX is so incredibly holistic what we’re doing is coming up with a strategy that is across the entire customer experience remit. You’ve got to really deliver or at least explain to organisations how they’re going to execute on it. If you don’t have experience as a tech and as a designer, a copywriter and everything, it’s very difficult for you to help teams deliver on that work, it’s almost impossible.” Throughout her incredibly enriching career, Brown says that one of the most important lessons she’s learned is resilience. “Whenever someone asks me about resilience I say that it’s a sense memory that you can recover from failure, that’s all it actually is. When you try loads of different things and some of those fail because that’s just life, you start to realise that in almost any situation you’ll be fine and you’ll figure out how to solve it.” Brown is an incredible advocate for constantly trying things in all facets of life. “When you’ve done that over and over again it means that you are able to try new things and constantly spread yourself through different experiences because you’ll know that you’ll figure it out. You just know on an unconscious level that you’ll be fine, because you’ve done it so many times before. So that’s why I think, not only for CX, but also for just being a better professional you have to keep trying things.”

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expect things to come to them, or they just wait for the perfect experience or job and that’s not the way that it works. I think with even the most perfect job you’re only going to know it once you’re in the job itself.” After going to back to UX consulting for agencies and as an experience strategist at DigitasLBi’s Digital Innovation Group, she moved to Melbourne to co-lead the experience design team at AKQA (then known as DT), eventually becoming the experience strategy director. She talks about knowing she had to leave London. “The whole thing is a constant assault on your energy levels – I got to a point where I just wanted something different, I felt like I was in a bit of a rut. My lifestyle was just working and going home and recovering.” She laughs, “The irony is that I haven’t changed my lifestyle at all.” Brown is very self-aware that she’s the type of person who is always on and a hard worker by nature, but what she also knows is that she can’t expect that from others. So, with all these incredibly complicated processes to dissect and rethink, how does Brown and her current role work with marketing within AKQA? “I give a holistic picture of where its marketing sits within the customer experience. I’ll do discovery research… For example, instead of asking people about their interactions with the bank, I’ll ask people what they think about money and the role that money plays in their lives.” Her process starts with not just the bigger picture, but the biggest one. “I’ll look at a whole bunch of things that are super high level and then I funnel that down to a journey or a blueprint or something that gives a holistic picture of everything that happens within a customer’s life and then I funnel that down further into touch points and channels, and I give marketers, or people who are looking at comms and acquisition in particular, a massive canvas to work from so they can actually start to see where the opportunities lie, as opposed to making these really siloed assumptions.” She breaks it down, explaining that CX is essentially saying, ‘here’s a holistic picture, here’s the canvas, here are all the opportunities’. What does simplicity mean to someone whose job it is to tackle something complicated? “To me, simplicity is when it’s inherently clear what its function is – something that’s so clear that you don’t even need to think about how it works. That is complicated for professionals because, ultimately, we’re always thinking about our process and we don’t think about the end customers much. I start everything from designing the perfect experience and I think about all the complexity, all the

Michelle Keomany is an Australian based in Paris. She is a content strategist at Publicis.Sapient France and ( full disclosure) previously worked with Tracy Brown at AKQA Melbourne.

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46 VISUAL TRENDS

THE PUBLIC PICTURE BOOK It’s important to know the speciﬁcities of your audience. But it’s also important to know when the tides are shifting. Reacting to trends found in Getty Images searches of 2018, the company is noticing a new proclivity for the clean and simple. What better way to ﬁnd out what people like to look at than taking a peek at what they ask to look at?

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Getty Images noticed a series of trends indicative of social shifts piquing the interest of image searches on its website.

Here are three of Getty Images’ Creative Trends of 2018.

SECOND RENAISSANCE With millions of people now carrying a high-quality lens in their pocket every day, it’s easier than ever to take pictures. In response, professional photographers are turning to art history to create more considered images that champion the idea of photographic craft. Demand for this style of work is growing, with searches for ‘luxury abstract’ up 186 percent and ‘vintage portrait’ up 94 percent.

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Stephanie Nnamani, Getty Images.

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marketingmag.com.au Thomas Northcut, Getty Images.

MASCULINITY UNDONE While past years have rightly been spent addressing the portrayal of women in advertising and the media, there is a growing awareness that stereotypes for representing men are also extremely outdated. Data showed an increase of 53 percent in searches for ‘gay dads’, 126 percent for ‘man meditation’ and 60 percent for ‘single father’.

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CONCEPTUAL REALISM A combination of evolving long-term visual trends, new technology and the public’s current scepticism to take things at their face value has spawned a new visual expression. The emergence of social media has seen a signiﬁcant rise in the demand for more real, authentic imagery. Searches for ‘unexpected concept’ were up 116 percent in 2018, while those for ‘reality’ were up 176 percent.

Jodie Griggs, Getty Images. @marketingmag OUT-OF-HOME

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Download the featured resource at

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Challenging times? Which functions should be addressed in-house and which should be outsourced? What does a solid agency relationship look like?

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52 CONTRIBUTED

Meet the CX mullet

workplace, too; not as a fashion choice, but as a metaphor for businesses that keep customer experience (CX) front and centre. “The new brand-and-business mullet should be ‘simple in the front, sophisticated in the back,” explained James ‘JC’ Curleigh, president of the Levi’s brand at the 2018 National Retail Federation Big Show. “Think of the best brands on Earth... they found a way to deliver simplicity on the front-side through a very sophisticated platform on the back side.” For Levi’s, that means a customer can easily ﬁnd their favourite jeans on an ecommerce website; that the style marketed to the individual customer in an email is in stock as promised; that the email follow-ups take size, preferences, and previous purchase into account. And the kicker: that it is never obvious that those experiences are supported with an intricate behind-the-scenes infrastructure. As Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane puts it, in customer service, “complexity is not a strength”.

he mullet has been a part of the Australian cultural zeitgeist for decades, running the gamut between light-hearted ’80s nostalgia and markers of identiﬁcation within communities. Mere mention of the word prompts a smile. One retail industry leader elevates its cachet even further, saying that the mullet is back in the

“If the mullet is the goal, what kind of haircut is your business rocking right now?”

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Slick customer experiences in the front-end require plenty of action at the back. Rod Moynihan pulls out the scissors on your CX strategy.

BUZZ CUTS AND BEARDS, PLEASE STAND UP If the mullet is the goal, what kind of haircut is your business rocking right now? In other words, what is the current state of your CX in relation to the ideal state? Consider an opposite example to the hypothetical jeans shopper with the seamless experience. Let’s say I bought a jacket that I need to return via mail, but I am not sure how, so I contact the support team. Great, support is on it. But since the support team is not in communication with the marketing department, I continue to receive messages about the same item via email or social media channels. This can be a frustrating experience; why don’t they know that I already bought and returned that particular

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jacket? As frustrating as the experience is, it is not the root of the problem. Rather, it is a symptom of a larger one: internal silos and complexities have become painfully obvious to the outside world, and scenarios like these are the result.

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER: THE OPPOSITE OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD

@marketingmag

The coat example paints a clear picture of how retail companies may be more complicated than they think. This leaves many on the business side of things wondering how to rectify the problem for customers. If simplicity – the front of the mullet – is the Holy Grail, there is a clear argument for retailers to do only a few things exceptionally well. Direct-to-consumer brands such as Catch Group and Mon Purse stand in clear contrast to overwhelming, large shopping environments, and it is hard to argue against the beneﬁts to the consumer. The experience is often simple, clean and direct – qualities customers expect in greater numbers. It is easy to learn the philosophy behind the companies and their products. All the products ﬁt on one page and they are a snap to order. I know how to contact support or self-serve on their help centre if something goes awry. And I know what to tag in my social media posts (less important, but nice to have).

CX is just like a mullet in one more way – you are likely to get little credit for it! Everyone notices when he or she receives poor service, and the punishment of shame often outweighs the ‘crime’. Conversely, no one seems to notice when CX is done well. In the name of CX, dare to be the company that does it well. The biggest compliment could be that nobody notices – and they keep coming back for more. Rod Moynihan is director at Zendesk ANZ.

“CX is just like a mullet in one more way – you are likely to get little credit for it!” Photo: Mel Kanicky

SIMPLIFY AT ANY SIZE For even the most complex organisations in the retail game, there are ways to simplify without reinventing the wheel. ✺ Truly be in a relationship with your customers: it is imperative to treat customers the way you want to be treated; for example, by asking ﬁrst about their needs and wants, as opposed to jumping straight into sales mode. ✺ Pick the right tech partner: the best solutions will guide your fans and customers toward a simple solution. Help them help you. ✺ Use data to inform your decisions from the inside: customers do not need to know how much data analysis went into that perfect scarf arriving in their subscription box at just the right time of the season. They probably do not want to know, either. Zendesk chief operating officer (COO) Tom Keiser explains, “Anonymity does not beget loyalty.” Data tells companies a lot about their customers’ needs and wants, and tapping into that data is a big step in identifying where their experiences could be improved.

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54 CONTENT PARTNER: UNLTD

A clear purpose Chris Freel found a way to bring satisfaction to his life, purpose to his work and opportunities to disadvantaged Australians. Here are his tips for getting on the road to creating real social impact.

Chris Freel is

magine that when you were born, you were told that as part of being allowed to enter this world, you then had to sign up to leave it in a better state than when you arrived. Then, imagine that we were all told the same thing and that all 7.2 billion humans on planet Earth had that purpose instilled in them from birth. That somehow it was a given that everybody would take responsibility for making the world a better place. How good would that be? You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one… sang a famous musician and philosopher once upon a time. But go with me, if you knew that you had to leave the world a better place, what would you do? What will you do? What is the legacy that you would like to leave? It’s hard to know where to start, but when you stop to think, it can be quite simple. The first time I really thought about this was about five years ago, when I was being interviewed for a job at Google. I had no idea how to answer. I had never considered it before and as I garbled some response about making sure things were better for my kids when I died, it dawned on me that I had spent my whole life focusing on superficial stuff, on myself mainly, being a selfish prick. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get the job, but it did plant the first seed towards trying to figure out my greater purpose.

“For the last 10 years it was all about promotion, more money, more stuff and more status.”

A few years later and suddenly the company I was working for pulled out of Australia and we all lost our jobs. It happened very quickly and came as a shock. My initial reaction was to move quickly on to the next opportunity. I went about setting up as many conversations as I could. But I was tired and confused. I had completely lost my sense of purpose. My body, head and family were all telling me to stop, take some time and think. So that’s what I did and over the next four months I tried to work out what the point of it all was. What was my purpose? For the last 10 years it was all about promotion, more money, more stuff and more status. But that wasn’t giving me the satisfaction that I thought it would. What I needed was simplicity. Do less, have less but with clearer purpose. Then, out of the blue, UnLtd approached me and it very quickly became clear that this was my purpose. I got to carry on working in an industry that I love, with people that I love, doing something that I love. I feel that my purpose is to help people to make a positive difference in the world. Most of us want to make a difference, but don’t know how. What if we could make it easy for people to make that change? At UnLtd we have a simple belief: that every young person deserves the best opportunity in life. But with over 680,000 young Australians at risk, for many young people, their opportunities are very limited. This could be due to suffering the consequences of neglect and abuse by their parents, health and mental health issues, disability, trauma or poverty. We work with 20 charity partners that all help young people at risk with various methods ranging from expressive play therapy and mentoring to more practical real world skill development through welding and woodwork workshops and alternative education. Despite the sometimes complicated, evidence-based methods, the

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CEO of UnLtd.

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“What I needed was simplicity. Do less, have less but with clearer purpose.”

@marketingmag

common theme that runs through most of our partners’ work is often very simple – having a constant adult in the young person’s life who believes in them. If you think back to the key moments in your life, it often comes down to having someone there who believed in you, who had your back and who encouraged you to follow your dreams. Sadly, many children and young people lack this. So, if the answer to helping these young people is relatively simple, it should be simple for each of us to give back and make a difference. But with over 60,000 charities and not-for-proﬁts in Australia, it can be difficult to know where to start, who to trust and to know what the easiest way is to make a positive change in society. If you have an urge to make a social impact but don’t know how, then here are some tips that may help guide you: ✺ Do something – the smallest acts can make the biggest difference. This could be helping a homeless person with some food, donating money or goods to a cause, volunteering or mentoring. The more of us that take action, the more positive impact we create. We all have the power to help. ✺ Have conversations – take time to understand the issues, what people need help with. Sometimes it’s just having somebody to talk to, somebody who will listen and is there for them, who shows belief in them and who turns up consistently without prejudice. ✺ Use your skills for good – we all have skills that can be used for good. In the marketing, media and creative space, UnLtd works with corporate partners to unlock the power of these skills and networks to drive real impact for our charity partners. We know what will make the biggest impact. This may be creative ideas, strategic experience, design skills,

videography, media planning, relationships, commercial acumen, technology and more. ✺ Complex issues, simple solutions – don’t be afraid of the issues. Homelessness, juvenile detention, drug abuse, assault, mental health – these are all confronting issues and often it is easier to ignore them. In many cases, however, the way to address all of these can be simple – having a consistent caring adult in their life. There are many ways that you could be that one caring adult. ✺ Learn and advocate – educate yourself on an issue that you are passionate about and work out how you can start or join a movement to add momentum to tackling the issue. ✺ Give a job – employment is the best way to help somebody get back on track; a job provides security, food, accommodation and the stability to build a positive life. We have recently launched a youth employment program with Talent Rise aiming to help young people who deserve a chance in life ﬁnd employment in the media and marketing sector. Get in touch if you have entry level opportunities and want to change a young person’s life. But, above all else, in between the challenges of managing a work and home life, perhaps the simplest way that we can make a difference is to smile and be kind. A smile and kind words can make the biggest difference to somebody’s day. Don’t underestimate how much impact a random act of kindness can have on somebody and the positive ripple effect it can create. Marketing is proud to have UnLtd as a Content Partner. UnLtd brings the Australian media, marketing and advertising industry to tackle a big issue: youth disadvantage. We urge you to visit unltd.org.au and get involved.

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56 CONTRIBUTED

The usual suspects

“You can use the strengths of one agency to keep the others honest.”

nless you’re a very experienced, well-trained marketer, it can be difficult to manage the conflicting agendas of individual agencies. While every agency’s going to say, ‘Yeah, we’re happy to work with such-and-such agency in a separate discipline’ the reality is, everybody’s got an eye on the shared wallet. Often, that’s not for your benefit as the commercial realities get in the way of delivering on the business objectives. This jostling makes it more difficult than it should be to get the outcomes you want. While there are definitely financial gains to be made in having a simplified agency roster, the real benefit is getting to more insightful ideas more quickly. With a focused team working on briefs for your brand, you’ll get it right the first time more often

because they’ll be deeply immersed in the business with an intimate understanding of the customer’s needs. Only when this all comes together will you see the optimal ﬁnancial efficiencies – not the least of which is more successful campaigns. As a full-service guy, of course, I’m going to tell you the best way to achieve this is with a single agency that has a consolidated model, because then you’re employing one group of people with one relationship to manage. A full-service offering is able to achieve the same objectives as a multiple agency roster and, from the agency’s perspective, there’s a severely increased level of accountability because nobody can blame the other guy for not delivering on targets. However, I appreciate that, for various reasons, it’s not always feasible to have only one agency on your roster. In some cases, the brand or brands you manage require multiple agencies and that’s unavoidable. If that’s the case, then you need to select your agencies carefully. The ﬁrst thing you want to do is ensure you’re not duplicating skill sets. One myth is that you need specialist agencies to handle the various needs of your business but, by necessity, there are a lot of ‘specialists’ within fully integrated agencies, so don’t get hung up on that. While managing multiple agencies is an art form, having several different advisers on call can be used to your advantage in ways you may not have considered. For example, you can use the strengths of one agency to keep

marketingmag.com.au

A streamlined agency roster can provide untold efﬁciencies for marketers, says Craig Flanders.

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the others honest. Perhaps you may have a big agency on the roster that does most of the volume, but you may pair them up with a smaller, nimble, more entrepreneurialstyle business. The smaller player can bring different capabilities that will help you to see the same problem from a different angle. That approach keeps what I call a ‘healthy tension’ in a multi-agency roster. It also ensures none of the parties gets complacent. If you’re reading this thinking your agency roster is far too complex and you’d really like to streamline it, the ﬁrst thing I would do is sit down and write a description, a bit like a job description, for the capabilities and outcomes you want and need. Think about the objectives you have for hiring one agency, two or more. What are the skill sets you require? Are there any additional skills those agencies are going to bring to the table that aren’t there already? Consider, also, the commercial imperatives you are trying to sort out by employing another bunch of people. How important is attitude? We work with a number of clients that have gone through the process of simplifying their agency rosters and the feedback we get from them is that it’s much more efficient. Also, as marketing

“That approach keeps what I call a ‘healthy tension’ in a multi-agency roster.” departments continue to shrink, generating efficiencies and alignment of strategies is very important. It’s not rocket science, but there is a lot of smoke and mirrors being peddled by agencies about why the way that they approach things is better than other agencies. And if you’re thinking about getting outside help with this, be aware that some consultants overcomplicate the process for their own purposes as well. This doesn’t need to be difficult. You simply need to understand what you’re trying to achieve and then ﬁnd the right people for the job. Craig Flanders is the CEO of Melbourne full-service agency Spinach.

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A HISTORY OF AUTOMATION Making robots do the hard work is anything but a new fantasy. Marketing takes a closer look at the history of automation and the role it plays in industries of today.

AUTOMATION noun | au·to·ma·tion | \ ˌȯ-tə-ˈmā-shən \ The use or introduction of automatic equipment in a manufacturing or other process facility.

CONFLICT

GENESIS Homer’s The Iliad sees the god of metalworking, Hephaestus, create ‘Automatons’ to assist him in fashioning weapons for the gods of Olympus.

World War II brought with it a desperate drive to automate industrial production and defence systems Tanks, warships and aircraft saw leaps in the automation of their operation. –––––––––– Mass communication was introduced through the proliferation of the switchboard.

LIGHTS OUT ‘Lights-out automation’ is a term coined in the 1980s referring to fully automated, zero-human production – and hence no need for lights.

TAKEOVER Modern industry automation exists in two forms: the assumption of a role previously performed by humans, and the facilitation of a human’s workﬂows to increase efﬁciency. Currently, it is estimated that modern technology will be able to automate 51% of economic activity, about $2.7 trillion in wages.

of retail,

of ofﬁce and admin support,

of food preparation, and

of production

is expected to become automated within the near future. Source: Edelman Tableau

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59 INFOGRAPHIC

SPORT KEEMOTION –

FOOD

Lowe’s retail locations in San Francisco feature an autonomous customer service bot that can lead customers around the store to speciﬁc products and take stock inventory in its free time.

The more shameful of us will be very familiar with McDonald’s self-serve touchscreens – ordering without a word and even building a custom burger.

FINANCE

RETAIL

Currently the industry uses a series of automation softwares similar to those seen in marketing: ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) – an integrated management system of core business processes operating in real time, similar to CRM softwares, and COMPLIANCE MONITORING – it can be a full-time job ensuring every part of the operation is in accordance with legal and best practice procedures. Software in this category can reduce tens of man hours into minutes.

ACCOUNTANTS HAVE A chance of being forced into looking for new work as the machines take over, according to the University of Oxford.

an automated broadcast system specialised for basketball and volleyball simulates zooming and panning on a virtual camera. The software also understands the game; it can recognise and cut highlights or plays of the game into shareable clips.

PIXELLOT – stitches multiple camera feeds into an single string, allowing for operators to place virtual cameras, and thus perspectives, anywhere on the ﬁeld.

DAN DUGAN SOUND DESIGN – sound is a deceptively important part of sport broadcasting, particularly in the studio. This software automatically balances multiple sonic inputs based on the most prominent source, reducing feedback, background noise and comb ﬁltering. Source: Volcano City

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Wired for Wonder is an experience not to be missed. All curious minds are welcome, whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re an individual looking for inspiration or a team that would thrive from hearing from incredible thought leaders, this event will definitely spark a desire to do and be more. Join us at Wired for Wonder in 2018 MELBOURNE: 11th September 2018 SYDNEY: 13th September 2018

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Beau Lotto

Genevieve Bell

Founder and CEO of Lab of Misfits

Cultural anthropologist technology and futurist

Janine Allis

Jordan Nguyen

Founder of Boost Juice and part-owner of Retail Zoo

Biomedical Engineer

Karen Palmer

Mitch Lowe

Interactive filmmaker

Netflix co-founder

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62 FEATURE

The moving target How the AFL broke its season ticket record with pinpoint targeting on Facebook, and why it may not be able to do so in the same way again. By Josh Loh.

n 2017 the Australian Football League (AFL) launched a strategic campaign with one key goal in mind: sell more tickets. In a sport with so many passionate fans and such a rich history, the brand faced an issue of scale. Its saturation created an enemy in itself. It appeared as though everyone with a desire to attend the football, was already attending the football. Blanket campaigns would no longer serve to drive awareness, because awareness was effectively at its peak. The AFL had to create a solution that would reinvigorate excitement around the sport, and remind fans how much fun a night at the footy could be. The key, however, was reminding the right fans. The brand needed to connect with customers personally and create marketing crafted to the individual. If only there were a platform where people openly divulge their personal interests (such as football allegiance) and spend hours a week scrolling through content? Marketing speaks to Sydney fan and head of automotive at Facebook, Ted Bergeron, who works closely with the AFL, to learn about the campaign’s two-pronged approach to targeting on Facebook. “You have those hardcore fans that are watching the games on TV and attending games: how do we get them to attend more games? And there are casual fans who know the sport and maybe watch highlights, but aren’t tuned in or attending games per se. How do we tap into those individuals with a more compelling offering? The AFL set out to develop better cut-though, creating content and promotions speciﬁc to targeted audiences deﬁned by commitment and club – Sydney fans would

see highlights from Sydney games, Geelong fans would see discounted ticket offerings to upcoming Geelong games. “They tapped into the individual team membership databases, partnering with the individual clubs and using those databases to target people who we knew were supporters of those clubs,” says Bergeron. Additionally, the AFL employed an AI Messenger bot to engage with fans directly – fans could ask about ﬁxtures, ticket prices, team information and more. “They really are adopting that personalised marketing approach, and really being customer centric,” continues Bergeron. From a creative perspective, the AFL tested a range of prints, styles and creative advertising units in a “mindset of continual improvement” according to Bergeron. “This is what all of our best partners adopt,” he says. It found that team imagery targeted at speciﬁc club fans elicited the best response. “Video in particular is always a really strong performer – they can tap into contextual moments in that team,” says Bergeron. When St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt departed the league, fans were targeted with a call to action to purchase tickets to their skipper’s last game – accompanying was a slow motion video of Riewoldt embracing his cousin and rival, Jack Riewoldt. “They’ve moved to this much more sophisticated creative output that is massively increasing relevance, based on better targeting and really taking advantage of the various ad units,” says Bergeron. Julian Dunne, head of marketing and insights at the AFL, advises sport marketers on the insights gained from the 2017 effort. “The best time to hit a sports fan is right after a win,” he says. “Use players in the creative and send the fan

The best time to hit a sports fan is right after a win.

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Deﬁning the footy fan Hardcore: spends time on the AFL website, individual club websites; checks ﬁxtures, upcoming rosters, injury reports etc. Casual: watches highlight clips on social media, occasionally engages with football conversation online etc.

Results: ✪ 17x return on ad spend ✪ 60 percent decrease in cost per conversion, and ✪ 47,000+ sales conversions for the season.

Marketing: Which footy team do you barrack for? Julian Dunne, AFL head of marketing and insights: Every team… and Carlton.

123RF’s svanix © 123RF.com

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64 FEATURE

The truth is, most ﬁnd [targeted advertising] to be little more than creepy harassment. a direct message – shorter, snappier content works best. Also, target the away team fans with their own club content as well as home teams; this had a good impact on sales.”

DISARMED Facebook went into damage control after its crisis involving Cambridge Analytica was plastered over international headlines. In March 2018, Facebook shut down the ability for advertisers to target ads on the platform based on consumer data from third parties. Cambridge Analytica was one of those third party data providers. From the perspective of some advertisers, this was an unfair move. The theory goes: data wealth allows marketers to show ads to audiences that are more likely to want to see them – which is beneficial to both brand and individual. This way, marketers don’t waste time and effort showing ads to uninterested audiences, and audiences are more often shown an ad that interests them – it’s a symbiosis. All it took was one bad domino to shatter a trust that many consumers enjoyed in blissful ignorance prior to the incident. Dunne says the changes have made targeting on Facebook more difficult for some specific audience segments. The AFL is running a “more optimised” advertising strategy with clubs on Facebook this year. “Some of the audience segmentation variables are no longer available, but it hasn’t really impacted us, as most of the variables we utilise for our own segmenting and targeting strategies are still available.” According to Bergeron, Facebook is taking steps to craft a “privacy safe, consumer first” third-party data option for

advertisers. “We’re working really closely with the third party data providers, as well as individual clients around a revised opportunity to utilise various data sources.” In the interim, marketers are being advised to make the most out of the available targeting capabilities on Facebook. “The ﬁrst party targeting opportunities that exist through the Facebook platforms are robust and extremely effective. That, for us, is core to a lot of the strategies that we utilise with a lot of our best clients,” says Bergeron.

marketingmag.com.au

left: Facebook mobile. right: Facebook desktop.

A NECESSARY EVIL As useful a tool targeting is to marketers, director of global sales strategy at Exponential Tyler Greer warns that its modern approach lacks an element of concern. “The consumer awakening around the use of their data seems to be peaking. For some, it is the apparent incursion by brands and services into what they regard as their private space, but for most it is simply about irritating ads. “While the argument goes that consumers prefer targeted advertising because it appears curated to their lifestyle and needs, the truth is most ﬁnd this to be little more than creepy harassment.” A June survey from InMoment conﬁrms Greer’s hypothesis: 75 percent of Australians reported they found most forms of online personalisation creepy. Only half, however, admitted they cared enough to avoid it. Nevertheless, for many marketers there is little alternative to targeting that achieves such maximisation. Facebook reports 16 million monthly active users in Australia, which is 81.7 percent of the eligible social media aged population. That means, only 18.3 percent of

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123RF’s tktktk © 123RF.com

account, including the elderly. A large audience is one thing, but in a social platform nearing saturation, targeting is no longer about optimisation, it’s about impact. Advertising on Facebook without targeting would be like hitchhiking at the bottom of the ocean.

ROUND TWO

For some it is the apparent incursion by brands and services into what they regard as their private space, but for most it is simply about irritating ads.

So, given the changes, could the AFL’s successful Facebook campaign be replicated this year? For Bergeron, little has changed. “[Facebook is] still utilising the conversiondriving tactics at bottom funnel and a lot of the cross device retargeting capabilities on the website,” he says. The focus will shift this year to more of a “brand building opportunity”, and further homing in on the distinctions between ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ fans. “I think where events [marketing] has an advantage is that there’s a lot of opportunity to use the intelligence around actual transactional data, to inform a more effective delivery of your advertising.” Bergeron goes on to explain that product marketers face an elasticity issue unfamiliar to those in events and sports marketing. Tracing the line from the moment of engagement to the instance of purchase can be messy. “If someone were to research a car, matching that person to someone who’s actually bought a car is pretty difficult. The

fact is, a lot of the event’s transactions occur online and you can use that really rich data to start to identify people that could be in those types of events moving forward.” On a fast-paced social media platform, attention is a scarce and ﬁercely battled resource. Bergeron warns, “The name of the game is relevance. If you can get more relevance, information, content and transactional opportunities in front of more relevant audiences, your transaction rate is going to improve and as a result your ROI is going to improve.” Upon just opening the targeting ﬂoodgates, one may feel that the reservoir has run dry. Facebook’s targeting options aren’t as hefty as they were during the AFL’s 2017 wonder season. As the saying goes, ‘restriction breeds creativity’ – perhaps this campaign should not serve as a story of what once was possible, but an indication that there is still room to budge.

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66 CASE STUDY

Tough times Campaign Tough Conversations Client Mercedes-Benz Vans Agency The Royals

Strategy: The ute category has

most competitive ute market in the world, with 215,000 utes sold in 2017. The Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger are the top two vehicles sold in Australia across all automotive categories. When MercedesBenz ﬁrst announced the arrival of the new X-Class, Australians were sceptical and unsure of how Mercedes-Benz – known for its premium vehicles – would go at producing a ute that’s stereotypically known as Australia’s workhorse.

been built on a history of ‘toughness’ defined by traditional masculine stereotypes of strength, ruggedness and towing capacity. But Australia is changing and toughness can no longer be defined by muscles and machismo. It’s more complex than that, but ute advertising keeps hammering home these lazy stereotypes and talking down to Aussie blokes. Our opportunity was to ‘redefine toughness’ and start a cultural conversation that seemed lacking from a male perspective in particular. Challenging the cultural conventions around what makes someone or something tough and taking a more progressive view on Australian toughness allowed Mercedes-Benz to break down barriers and enter the ute market for the very first time. We chose to give all Aussies a tough vehicle they could relate to and broaden the appeal beyond tradies and weekend warriors. This was the strategic thinking that led to ‘Tough Conversations’ with iconic punk rocker, actor,

Objectives: The Royals agency was tasked with developing a pre-launch campaign for the X-Class to emotionally prime Australians with a unique and memorable take on a tough ute. The campaign had to generate awareness of the ﬁrst ute Mercedes-Benz had ever produced, reach a new audience outside motoring media, shift brand and category perception around what makes someone or something tough, and generate more than 7000 leads before the ofﬁcial launch of the X-Class.

radio host, writer and social commentator Henry Rollins at its helm. ‘Tough Conversations’ explored the evolution of toughness to encompass not just strength, aggression and towing capability, but resolve, overcoming adversity and strength of character. Our intention was to shine a light on the reality that toughness can come in many forms. By highlighting the evolution of ‘tough’ – a highly valued Aussie trait – Mercedes-Benz aimed to reﬂect the values of a more progressive audience and connect with a new type of ute driver.

marketingmag.com.au

Background: Australia is the

Execution: ‘Tough Conversations’ was an integrated, content-driven campaign, led by a one-hour documentary and a podcast series of ﬁve episodes. It also included PR, DM, social and online content, as well as a radio partnership with Triple M. To create the content, Mercedes-Benz Vans commissioned Rollins to take a road trip across the country, travelling from Melbourne to Mount Isa in the new X-Class, and along the way talking to Australians from all walks of life about what

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toughness means to them. Among a bunch of hard-working everyday Australians, Rollins also spoke to some well-known Aussies, including world champion surfer Mick Fanning, City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and APRA Songwriter of the Year (2018) Adam Briggs. Perhaps not an obvious choice for Mercedes-Benz at ﬁrst, Rollins’ interview prowess, endless curiosity and contradictory nature (rugged exterior/deep thinker) made him the perfect spokesperson to announce a new way of thinking and a new type of toughness. Driving through the harsh terrains of Australia also gave the X-Class centre stage throughout the campaign. Australians followed Rollins’ journey via daily updates on social media, a dedicated microsite and EDMs leading up to the broadcast of the documentary and podcast. The podcast featured longer, more in-depth interviews with our best subjects. The immediate nature of Facebook and Instagram Stories allowed consumers to get up close and personal with Rollins’ journey and follow behind the scenes, creating anticipation and interest in the campaign. Through the careful curation of interviewees, we furthered the reach of our content thanks to Fanning, Briggs and Moore sharing the campaign with their large number of followers on social media. As part of a radio partnership with national station Triple M, Rollins was interviewed before his road trip. Radio spots promoted the campaign during the journey and the partnership

culminated in a one-hour radio special dedicated to the promotion of ‘Tough Conversations’. For the social component of the campaign, we targeted look-alike audiences of Mercedes-Benz’s fans, tailoring an X-Class-ﬁrst approach to content and using product-focused content to engage them into ‘Tough Conversations’. When targeting Rollins’ fans, we adopted a ‘Tough Conversations’-led approach and slowly brought them into the X-Class world. PR was integral to the campaign, allowing Australians to engage with ‘Tough Conversations’ every step of the way – before, during and after Rollins’ journey across the east coast of Australia. Initiatives saw the likes of local and national networks and publications attend the interviews along the journey, while Rollins attended two days of press interviews following his epic road trip to promote the campaign. A heavy digital pre-roll and radio plan then ampliﬁed the podcasts and documentary trailers to Australia, inviting audiences to tune in to ‘Tough Conversations’. The campaign ran for eight weeks between 19 February and 18 April 2018.

Results: The campaign started a conversation with Australians on what it means to be tough, positioning the X-Class as a vehicle that not only reﬂects their lifestyle, but also their character. Among the results: ✪ the documentary was picked up by Network Ten and aired during

✪

✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

✪ ✪

✪

primetime on ONE and streamed on catch-up TV the ‘Tough Conversations’ podcast was number one on the Apple podcast chart within 48 hours of launch 90 percent of each podcast episode was consumed, showing signiﬁcant engagement Virgin Australia picked up the podcast series for its in-ﬂight entertainment 4.5 million people were reached through PR coverage alone the campaign gained 85 pieces of positive PR across national TV, radio, print and online media – including Henry Rollins co-hosting The Project and numerous news reports, opinion pieces and interviews by mainstream general news media entertainment, current affairs and motoring journalists a total of $821,000 additional media value was generated Mercedes-Benz Vans’ Instagram following grew 54 percent and engagement on Facebook increased 300 percent almost 70,000 people visited the campaign microsite, with two-thirds spending an average of four minutes exploring the X-Class page brand health measures showed our audience now sees the X-Class as a tough and credible contender in the category, and by the end of the pre-launch campaign, over 9800 people registered their interest for the X-Class.

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70 CASE STUDY

Fractured fairy tales

Background: Two-thirds of

Objectives: As part of a broader

Kiwi kids don’t have enough calcium in their diets. But it’s almost impossible to engage with both them and their parents in a meaningful way in order to convince them to drink more milk. In 2016 Anchor launched its new brand platform, ‘Go Strong’. The positioning was cemented in the belief that the good nutrition that dairy offers can strengthen people from the inside out. And when people feel strong both physically and emotionally, they have the courage to give anything a go. But the problem was, Go Strong was a difﬁcult concept to make relevant to children. Which is a shame, considering the numbers of calcium deﬁcient New Zealand children and the fact that calcium is a vital mineral in the development of bone structure.

masterbrand campaign launch, this activity had an important part to play, encouraging Kiwis to participate with the brand and helping them understand the new positioning – the launch of ‘Go Strong’, a new platform encouraging New Zealanders to champion the bravery to give it a go. We needed nationwide brand activity that demonstrated this positioning and had an effect on people in their communities, helping to substantiate the wider campaign launch comms. Research tells us that around two-thirds of Kiwi children aren’t consuming enough calcium (source: ‘Food and Nutrition Guidelines for Healthy Children and Young People: a Background Paper’ Ministry of Health, 2012), and every year 10,000 kids in New Zealand break their arms. The objective was to

educate parents and their children about the nutritional beneﬁts of milk, and keep Anchor top of mind. The brief target was parents with kids, we then reﬁned that to parents with children aged three to 12.

marketingmag.com.au

Campaign X-Ray Casts Client Anchor Agency Colenso BBDO

Laying the foundations In New Zealand, the land of milk and honey, milk is something of a commodity. There’s a growing perception that all milk, regardless of the brand, comes from the same source and that the difference between one brand and another is non-existent – that it’s just ‘marketing’. This makes a conversation about value or attempting to charge an actual price premium rather difﬁcult with our savvy customers. Fortunately, Anchor’s milk isn’t all just regular milk; there are enriched variants with very tangible beneﬁts (such as Protein+ and Calci+). It

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73 CASE STUDY

“If a child breaks a bone, they can receive a special X-ray cast showing their own break and free calcium-rich Anchor milk for the time it takes to heal.”

was our task, therefore, to bring this point of differentiation to life. @marketingmag

Understanding our core audience We needed to ﬁnd a way to make the ‘Go Strong’ message relevant to children, and differentiated enough so that people would buy Anchor. But rather than just create an ad that educated kids and their parents alike about the importance of calcium in the development of strong bones, we understood the moment in a kid’s life when this truth would truly become the most salient: the moment a child presents in an emergency room with a broken bone. It felt like kids were a segment of the population that – more than anyone – would not only see the value of strong bones, but also desperately needed them. But we needed an idea that would resonate with parents and their kids directly. Something new and interesting that would engage them with Anchor’s new positioning while also educating them about the importance of bone health and calcium. X-Ray Casts was developed as a true expression of what ‘Go Strong’ means for children.

Execution: X-Ray Casts is an interactive content campaign for kids. If a child breaks a bone, they can receive a special X-ray cast showing their own break and free calcium-rich Anchor milk for the time it takes to heal. In a media partnership with hospitals and emergency rooms across the country, we created posters, leaﬂets and digital screens that spoke directly to the audience, offering help precisely when they needed it. Patients uploaded their X-rays to our website. We then created bespoke vinyl stickers of their actual break and posted a pack out to them within 24 hours. The pack contained a super tough heat-shrink sticker that showed their actual X-ray and had a barcode that could be scanned at supermarkets, giving them free Anchor Calci+ milk throughout their entire healing process – we turned the plaster casts of the kids of New Zealand into highly shareable social content, all of which reinforced our core brand message of the nutritional power of dairy.

Results: We saw an incredible uptake with over 700 applications in the ﬁrst couple of weeks. An estimated 63 percent of kids with breaks in our target audience (who on average break 59 arms a day) applied for a cast – 122 applications in the ﬁrst 48 hours alone. Our video content was engaging and relevant to our target: ✪ 40 percent of users who started the video, watched through to the end, compared to a 15 percent global average, and ✪ at three percent engagement, the launch post was twice as engaging as the FMCG industry average (1.52 percent). The uptake, ongoing conversation and brand engagement has meant this has been hugely successful. The cast became a unique type of branded content that allows us to reach audiences well beyond our media, if every child showed their cast to classmates, we’d see this halo effect expose another 19,277 people to the campaign on any one day. We’re successfully affecting behaviour and educating our local communities, with genuine product and consumer truths front and centre.

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74 CASE STUDY

Honest look at a magic mountain

Background: Mount Hotham is one of Victoria’s premier ski resorts, with a history that reaches into Indigenous culture, as well as the rich context of the gold rush, mountain cattlemen, and the Great Alpine Road that takes travellers from north-east Victoria into Gippsland via the Victorian Alps. Mount Hotham boasts spectacular views, its own airport and 320 hectares of ski terrain during winter. Considered the ‘Powder Capital’ of Australia, Mount Hotham is the only resort in the southern hemisphere where the village is located on top of the mountain, ensuring endless awe-inspiring views and ski-in, ski-out opportunities from wherever you are in the village. The resort boasts 13 chair lifts, three terrain parks and 35 kilometres of cross country skiing, as well as complementary family friendly activities like tobogganing, dog sled tours and snow mobile rides, not to mention luxurious day spas and a range of restaurants

and bars. Mount Hotham’s challenge was much of its branding had been built upon the idyll of a ski resort, promising experiences comparable to, and inspired by, overseas ski resorts. This was not a position that was unique to Mount Hotham, with many Australian resorts communicating a similar message. However, this was in contrast to the modern consumers’ perceptions and expectations of the Australian alpine experience. To be completely honest, sometimes it rains at an Australian ski resort. And sometimes, it’s windy and you lose your glove, and your goggles fog up. Yet, despite all this, there is a magic in Australian ski resorts. Mount Hotham provides a unique compilation of experiences from the wildlife in the mountain pygmy possum, not found anywhere else in the world, to the lodges that were built by hand by locals. The snow resort experience in Australia can be an imperfect one, but that in itself is why it is perfect. Mount Hotham recognised this

need to embrace the Australian experience for what it is – still an awe-inspiring experience, but one that is different to that of overseas resorts. It was important to embrace the Australian experience and, in turn, create a distinctive brand for Mount Hotham.

marketingmag.com.au

Campaign True Spirit of Alpine Australia Client Mount Hotham Agency 10 Feet Tall

Objectives: Mount Hotham Resort Management Board engaged 10 Feet Tall to recapture the essence of Mount Hotham in a branding campaign that aimed to achieve the following objectives: ✪ raise Mount Hotham’s proﬁle in the tourism market ✪ develop a brand that functions all year round ✪ create a harmonious voice for the mountain that represents the whole mountain experience, and ✪ increase collaboration and involvement of locals and business operators. As a destination marketing campaign, the ultimate measure of success was to increase visitation to the resort.

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Strategy: The strategy was

Execution: In June 2017, Mount

simple – to be frank, honest and open, and state what the people of Mount Hotham truly believe in. This message would then be broadcast to a wide audience, so they too could share in the experience of the mountain. By embracing the breadth of experiences on the mountain, the campaign intended to move beyond just the hardcore skiers and snowboarders, and foster appeal for a broad range of consumers, regardless of their snow experience. The ﬁrst step on the journey was to engage the locals of the mountain. From these workshops, it was clear that what the locals love most about Mount Hotham – and what has them returning season after season – is the natural beauty of the mountain. Mount Hotham has the unique beneﬁt of being located on a ridgeline, ensuring spectacular views from sunrise to sunset. The other clear takeout was the uniquely Australian culture evident through the pioneering spirit of the gold miners, cattlemen, early skiers, road crews and all the supporting cast throughout the mountain’s history delivering the experiences available today. This resulted in the ‘True Spirit of Alpine Australia’ campaign, centred on one very clear proposition: ‘Australia’s highest village with the most down-to-earth people delivering unique experiences.’ The epic scenery and remote location of Mount Hotham has always been its draw card, but this campaign went beyond this by featuring the personality and values that make it unique to a broader audience.

Hotham launched the destination brand the ‘True Spirit of Alpine Australia’ with an associated 12-week advertising campaign. To ensure it was truly authentic in execution, the campaign gave the voice to the mountain and the locals who inhabit it to explain what inspires them about Mount Hotham. Indeed, the entire campaign can be summed up by the script of the film that launched the campaign: “It’s me, Mount Hotham, and it’s my view that you don’t tell stories around campfires, you create them; that fresh snow and salt of the earth are the secret to a good meal; that the higher your family gets, the less grip the world has on you; that the taller the mountain, the shorter the day seems; that being bundled up in a coat sure beats being wrapped up in cotton wool… and that welcomes are made even warmer by the cold. It’s not a common view, but if you’d like to share it, all I can say is that I am here, and I am waiting.” The campaign came to life through film, social media, digital display, a radio partnership with Triple M Melbourne and the development of a microsite – a digital tool to allow consumers to discover how Mount Hotham could uniquely cater to their individual preferences. The locals of the mountain were celebrated through videos where they provided undiluted insights into what they loved about Mount Hotham. These stories resonated with consumers for their downto-earth nature, as one of Mount

Hotham’s most loved locals, Bill Barker, Ski Patrol director, said, “The feedback I get from those that come to Hotham for the ﬁrst time is they are blown away with how friendly everyone is… it’s a genuine thing, not ﬂuffed out by too much marketing hype.”

Results: The campaign was an unqualiﬁed success. The initial 12-week campaign generated over 31 million impressions, and nearly 90,000 clicks to the website with a bounce rate of 11 percent, indicating the relevance of the content and the targeting of the right consumers. The campaign contributed to an increase in visitation of 24 percent in Winter 2017, exceeding the average growth of Victorian ski resorts. The branding efforts received industry acclaim, with Mount Hotham receiving the following acknowledgements: ✪ Gold, Destination Marketing, RACV Victorian Tourism Awards ✪ winner, Breakthrough Destination of the Year, Mumbrella Travel Marketing Awards, and ✪ Best Government Agency, Australasian Leisure Management Marketing and Communication Awards. Perhaps even more impressive in a ski resort, the chairlift conversations with locals were all remarkably positive, with the overwhelming feedback being it was great to see Mount Hotham embracing its uniqueness and standing strong in what it could offer.

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78 CASE STUDY

Pre-game

Background: The gaming console category is renowned for being ﬁercely competitive – so much so that the rivalry among the manufacturers has been dubbed ‘the console wars’. The launch of a new console is an opportunity to reignite fan enthusiasm and boost market share. In November 2017, Xbox released the Xbox One X – the world’s most powerful console. Unlike its competitors, the device offered players a truly high-ﬁdelity experience, with crystal clear and vibrant 4K HDR graphics, supersharp Dolby Atmos audio, and smooth gameplay owing to the console’s enormous processing power. However, internal research revealed that almost all of these differentiating features needed to be seen to be believed. With pre-orders a vital component of

the success of a new console launch, this presented a problem, as consumers were unable to play the console before launch.

Objectives: opr’s task in launching Xbox One X in Australia to core gamers was challenging due to the highly competitive gaming environment and customers’ inability to trial before purchase. In essence, the idea had to be big enough to achieve both the communication and business objectives, including: ✪ creating a unique launch moment that would deliver both widespread news headlines on a global scale, and ✪ capturing the hearts and minds of core fans, as well as mainstream audiences, drive sales and pre-orders and ultimately increase market share.

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Campaign Xbox Stay N’ Play Client Xbox Australia Agency opr (Pulse Communications)

Strategy: Our insights revealed that to showcase the power of Xbox One X, would-be customers would really need to see and experience the console firsthand to understand its benefits in action. Hands-on experiences were key and we knew the Xbox fan base and gamers in Australia would do anything to get their hands on a console early before release. Our solution was a boutique, gaming-themed sleepover experience that would give fans unhindered access to the Xbox One X, days before its official release, with the natural beauty of Sydney as the photogenic backdrop. While the easy way would have been to host our sleepover fan experience at an existing venue, we knew originality would be highly regarded by Xbox fans and our intended global audience – so we

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“Internal research revealed that almost all of these differentiating features needed to be seen to be believed.”

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built the Xbox Stay N’ Play from the ground up in a striking location. Giving Sydney equal star billing rights with our product was key in generating spectacular imagery that would earn column inches and spread globally among the gaming community.

Execution; The Xbox Stay N’ Play hotel was situated in front of the iconic Sydney skyline in Pirrama Park, Pyrmont, with the ﬁrst-ofits-kind establishment opening its doors from Friday 3 to Sunday 5 November 2017. It consisted of four private and bookable suites (each themed after an Xbox One X enhanced title) and an open-play lobby, allowing fans to experience the true power of Xbox One X in a unique and controlled environment. Each private suite could be booked for overnight accommodation and included 4K HDR televisions for super-sharp and smooth gameplay, Dolby Atmos-enabled headsets

for cinema quality audio, and a full selection of Xbox One X enhanced games. Bookings were accepted online on a ﬁrst-come, ﬁrst-served basis. Visitors without a booking could experience the Xbox One X in the open-play lobby.

Results: The bookable suites at the Stay N’ Play sold out within three hours of going live to the public, demonstrating a high level of community engagement. Despite the event taking place on Sydney’s wettest weekend in recent history, more than 600 people visited the Stay N’ Play over the weekend to get hands-on time with the Xbox One X console. The Xbox Stay N’ Play generated more than 310 pieces of highly messaged media coverage during the pre-order window across key mainstream, consumer, gaming and broadcast media outlets. Combined, these created a potential reach of 150 million people, driven by purely earned

media opportunities. Just as importantly, social content of the activation reached over 407,000 fans, sparking more than 5000 engagements. On Facebook and Instagram, video content was viewed over 65,000 times (across posts and stories). On average, Facebook posts performed 48 percent better than regular organic posts. This included a 23 percent increase in total engagement on regular paid and organic posts. Results have been achieved purely organically, with no spend put behind any social activity. The campaign has also been recognised by a number of highly coveted award ceremonies, including: ✪ Winner of Best Outdoor Advertising Campaign at the PromaxGAMES Awards 2018 ✪ Winner of Best PR Campaign at the MCV Paciﬁc Awards 2018, and ✪ Shortlisted for Best Experiential PR at the PRWeek Asia Awards 2018.

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84 CONTRIBUTED

De-cluttering the digital consumer

e’re living, breathing, communicating and transacting in an insanely cluttered digital world. There’s a proliferation of media, with consumers connecting and taking control in more ways than ever, as new channels and platforms become advertising media in their own right. Overall media consumption is increasing; but across more channels and in headlines or short snippets, leading to a consumer culture of instant gratification – and this is transcending into the world of brands. The digital age has given marketers access to a wealth of data and new, readily available metrics emphasising short-term measures of success regardless of overall campaign goals. This trend is often at the expense of understanding the long-term effectiveness of marketing and recognising the value of building strong brands. BrandZ research over the years clearly shows us that building strong brands underpins long-term growth. Looking at the Top 100 Global Brands of 2017 reveals those with a clearly defined purpose grew in value on average three times faster over the past 12 years. In today’s fragmented, instant gratification environment, building brands is as important as ever and marketers must learn how to build and measure brand effectiveness across channels.

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Mark Henning on the brand-changing art of effective integration.

“This trend is often at the expense of understanding the long-term effectiveness of marketing.” MARKETING AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018

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AUSTRALIANS FIND ADS INTRUSIVE AND ANNOYING And they’re doing something about it. It’s difficult to cut through the noise, grab attention and be relevant to consumers. A quick dip survey of Australians found 79 percent believe there are more ads than three years ago, and the majority (seven out of 10) ﬁnd those ads more intrusive and annoying today. That’s bad news for brands, as the digital age has given users more control over what they consume and when – and they’re acting on it. According to Kantar Millward Brown’s ‘AdReaction 2017,’ 36 percent of Gen Z consumers have ad blockers installed. While the increase in channels provides an array of new opportunities for brands to connect with consumers, a Lightspeed survey found that only half of Australians (48 percent) believe cross-channel marketing campaigns actually ﬁt together cohesively. This represents a potential missed opportunity for marketers.

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BRAND CONSISTENCY ACROSS TOUCH POINTS At the 2017 World Economic Forum, unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed said what keeps him up at night is that “the fragmentation of brands is a massive risk” – and it’s something we all see as consumers. “You see in different places that the brand isn’t quite the brand, and that is a real challenge for marketers. How do you create the power of a brand, the consistency and the integration across all these different voices?” asked Weed. Australian brands must review their strategies even more closely. It’s vital to stand out in this increasingly fragmented media landscape, and ﬂawlessly deliver relevant, integrated communication across touch points to deliver brand impact. Even for tech brands that live and breathe the digital world, their touch points must converge and communicate – look at the importance of the Apple store for all customers, from aﬁcionados to grandparents, or iCal for families to calendar share. Millennial consumers born with the internet are primed to engage with their brands in the bricks and mortar environment – there’s still an instinctive human need for physical interaction.

GOOD INTEGRATED CAMPAIGNS OUTPERFORM Despite the challenges, when executed successfully, integrated multimedia campaigns will outperform non-integrated ones. Kantar’s analysis of over 120 crossmedia campaigns in Australia and New Zealand reveals more than one-third of overall media impact is driven by

“The digital age has given users more control over what they consume and when – and they’re acting on it.” media synergy – often referred as the ‘media multiplier effect’. As my colleague Straford Rodrigues eloquently puts it, “Synergy is the additive effect of two or more media working together to drive overall brand or sales KPIs – more than either one could do on its own.” Successfully integrated campaigns thrive through connecting across touch points – having an impact in different environments with content tailored to the platform, but linked through elements that provide consistency of brand and message throughout. This consistency around a strong central idea is crucial; however, adaptation and integration across key touch points is also important – both online and offline. Consistent use of characters, brand imagery, product shots and colours are important visual cues, but audio cues shouldn’t be forgotten – just make sure the audio is going to be heard if you are relying on it. That brings me to the next point: adaptation to each platform also increases impact. Understanding how content will be consumed and tailoring it to perform in each environment is now more important than ever. Every piece of content counts – individual creative quality can deﬁne your overall campaign success, but choose channels wisely. They must have a clearly deﬁned role. In particular, target online judiciously, and for all channels ensure you can strike the right balance between familiarity to integrate and novelty to engage. Remember, in today’s fragmented marketing landscape, harnessing the power of synergy is not only critical for avoiding brand fragmentation, but necessary to maximise marketing budget ROIs that seem constantly under pressure. ‘Ad Reaction 2018’ found well-integrated and customised ad campaigns can improve overall campaign effectiveness by as much as 57 percent, allowing brands to get more impact from their investment. Ineffective and disjointed advertising also runs the risk of alienating consumers – leading to those “sleepless nights” that hound Keith Weed. Mark Henning is executive director of media and digital at Kantar Millward Brown.

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86 BEST OF THE WEB: EDITOR’S CHOICE

Simple versus wonderful: the two speeds of marketing

Adam Ferrier is founder and chief strategy ofﬁcer at Thinkerbell.

sychology is the science of behaviour and mind, and many years ago when practising as a psychologist I had the scientist practitioner model drummed into my head: ‘Don’t do anything as a clinician unless there is scientiﬁc evidence to support it.’ So when I made the switch to adland, I was amazed by how decisions were made. In a nutshell, the whole thing was completely made up. There was no science behind the creative, or even strong data to back up the insights. The most common justiﬁcation I heard for creative recommendations was ‘trust me’. Being inquisitive, but largely just really nervous about saying the wrong thing, I set out to try and understand a little more about how creativity and advertising actually worked. So I did some fossicking and read a few books, and came across

The Hidden Power of Advertising by Robert Heath. This book (and others) helped me to start to understand advertising from a more scientiﬁc foundation and, importantly, also gave me some language that helped to articulate how it all worked.

THINGS ARE MOVING ON “Never underestimate the powers of tradition,” an old boss once said to me – and in many ways he was right. In many areas, the industry has not completely removed itself from the shackles of the old analogue world. However, the science and the practice of advertising are – at least in some quarters – starting to hold hands. We see outspoken academics and scientiﬁc-based learning beginning to make inroads into our decision-making. This type of thinking is probably most prevalent in media selection and impact.

For example, according to Sankey and Roberts there is emerging evidence that 15-second ads are as effective as 30-second ads. And, in a further shock to the 30-second spot, there is research that indicates the six-second advertising concept – driven by YouTube, Facebook and in recent times the Fox Network with its NFL experiment – potentially works as hard as the 15s. This is interesting stuff for marketers and advertising people who have long held the belief that advertising worked by engaging people in a story or narrative. Perhaps the whole thing is a lot simpler than that?

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In a clinical dissection of marketing psychology and the six-second ad, Adam Ferrier asks ‘why not go shorter?’

SIX SECONDS OR LESS How short is too short? Do we actually need a full six seconds? Across certain media, shorter and

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shorter video ads provide brands with the opportunity to increase the reach and frequency of their campaigns with the same budgets. Does this mean ultimately they are more effective? One medium that does very well with six seconds, or less, is out-ofhome (OOH). From its foundation, OOH has, in the main, been a medium that needed to gain impact immediately and, even with its digitisation, it has remained true to displaying content that’s simple, succinct and requires little involvement. Which brings me back to Robert Heath.

Keep things simple, jingle the logo in front of people for a while, a bit of paired association, and lo and behold you’ve got a memory structure that may lead to a sale.

SIMPLE BUT FREQUENT

WONDERFUL TOO

Heath’s theories on ‘low involvement processing’ still hold, and basically say you don’t need to be aware you’ve seen an ad in order for that ad to have an impact and build your brand. It makes sense; we don’t remember all the ads we see in a day, we don’t even remember most we see on a drive down the freeway – but they are all making an impact. They are being processed implicitly.

At the other end of the spectrum is every planner’s favourite odd couple – Peter Field and Les Binet (2013) – who say that ‘fame’-based work is the most effective. This means stuff that people take in, process, enjoy, participate in and talk about. Creating fame in six seconds of advertising is tough (although it can be done, as the NFL proves). Now that both the science and the

“There was no science behind the creative, or even strong data to back up the insights. The most common justiﬁcation I heard for creative recommendations was ‘trust me’.”

technology are pointing to shorter form content, there is the real opportunity for a proliferation of six-second ads. We all like seeing strong, big and better creative ideas that garner people’s full wide-eyed attention and wonder. These wonderful ideas will still hold currency and be powerful in building brands (fame). But is our job to actually bring the simple and the wonderful together? Getting the basics right and maximising exposure via low involvement processing, keeping Mr Heath happy, yet at the same time looking for moments of wonderful that create genuine fame for Messrs Field and Binet? The clients and agencies that deliver both with passion will do well, as will the media owners that support both requirements.

Got an opinion? We love to hear from industry professionals and invite you to get in touch with us! marketingmag.com.au

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88 BEST OF THE WEB: MOST SHARED

Keys to counting content KPIs

Nate Vickery is editor at Bizzmark Blog and an author on The Next Web.

ne of the major problems content marketers face is not knowing how to track the effectiveness of their content. Many believe that content marketing is subjective and that it depends on some intangible metrics, but it’s not true. There is a wide range of speciﬁc metrics that can tell you which strategies really drive more trafﬁc to your site, boost conversions or increase your revenue. All you have to do is learn how to separate the right KPIs from those that may distract you. With this in mind, here are eight awesome metrics every content marketer should monitor:

could be a poor page load speed? Maybe your content is not relevant to them or the overall appeal of the site is not that positive. What about your menu and navigation? How clear and user friendly are they? The only problem with this metric is that it’s usually misunderstood, as it can sometimes be quite murky. For instance, if someone clicks on your link from Facebook and leaves your site after reading your article from beginning to end, this still counts as a bounce – this is why you shouldn’t rely on this metric solely when determining the success of your content.

2. RETENTION METRICS

1. THE BOUNCE RATE

“Remember, attracting new visitors to your site is important, but retaining them and boosting their loyalty to your brand is the foundation of your content marketing strategy.”

3. TIME SPENT ON PAGE

The bounce rate shows how many visitors leave your site after viewing just one page. This metric provides you with an invaluable insight, helping you understand your target audience. It gives you an opportunity to ﬁnd out why someone lands on your site and then kicks it before completing the desired action. It

The name says it all – retention metrics show how many people return to your site. These metrics include stuff like return visitors and the frequency of returns – they are insanely important to content marketers as they actually show how well your content resonates with your readers. If it’s relevant, informative and engaging enough, they will come back. Most importantly, they will see you as a reliable and trusted source of information. Remember, attracting new visitors to your site is important, but retaining them and boosting their loyalty to your brand is the foundation of your content marketing strategy.

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Content marketing is subjective and can’t be measured by tangible metrics, right? False. It’s as much about creativity as it is about knowing your audience.

It’s good to know the average amount of time your readers spend on your site since it shows how engaged they are with your content. So if you’ve published a comprehensive 2000-word guide and you see that people leave it after two minutes, this means that they’re not reading it. The same goes for your videos,

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infographics and podcasts. If your visitors aren’t interested in reading, watching or listening to your content from beginning to end, this means that you’re either targeting the wrong people or that you’re failing to bring value to them. The major problem with this metric is that it doesn’t really tell you if your readers are actively engaged. For example, if someone opens your article, but then gets distracted by a phone call and spends 15 minutes on that page without reading a single sentence, that’s not engagement – but it would inﬂuence your average time on page. The only way to make it relevant is to use tools like Mouseﬂow or Riveted that monitor people’s scrolls, mouse movements, keyboard use and clicks to measure their engagement. You could even put together a custom KPI dashboard and combine the widgets from different tools to monitor your KPIs simultaneously.

4. PAGES PER VISIT To give your blog an SEO (search engine optimisation) boost and improve user experience, you need to link internally – that’s the golden rule of content marketing. Internal links lead your readers to other articles relevant to them, meaning that they will spend more time on your site and visit more than one page per visit. Of course the higher pages per session the more engaging your content is, but it doesn’t have to be so – if your pages per visit are high but your time on page is low, this may mean that your visitors are clicking through your website but not ﬁnding what they’re looking for.

5. TRAFFIC SOURCES Monitoring and tracking the source of your website trafﬁc gives you an opportunity to understand which content promotion channels work for you. Using Google Analytics

“Content marketing is not just about creativity. To create content that really resonates with your target audience, you need to track its performance regularly.”

you can make tracking codes and analyse the volume of traffic from specific sources. For example, natural inbound links are immensely important as they show that your readers find your content valuable enough to link to it naturally. Most importantly, they tell you what content receives your readers’ attention and help you tailor your strategy to their needs.

6. SOCIAL SHARES Awesome content brings value – when your readers become aware of that value they will start sharing your posts. Whenever they hit the share button on your site, they’re actually saying, ‘This is a really valuable piece of content, so check it out!’ If your site is well-established, then you should deﬁnitely add social share buttons with counters that tell both you and your visitors how well people are interacting with your content. Above all, this number is a strong indicator that your article is important and that your visitors should read it.

7. LEADS GENERATED Lead generation is the backbone of your business and the primary purpose of content marketing. Namely, ‘leads generated’ is the metric that measures the leads that come directly from your content – be it from completions, email sign-ups or requests for more information etc. This strategy is immensely important

as it shows whether your content drives real business opportunities and whether it has a chance to boost your ROI.

8. THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT To ensure your content marketing strategy makes sense, you should always calculate your return on investment (ROI). The formula is simple: (generated proﬁts – initial investment) / (initial investment). So if you invested $300 and generated $1200, your ROI would be three (or 300 percent). Of course, as with anything else in digital marketing, calculating ROI is not that simple. To get the most out of it, you should also pay attention to your lead generation, SEO, website trafﬁc, conversion rates, the cost of software and tools, the cost of producing content, the cost of promoting content and time spent planning your content marketing strategy etc.

CONCLUSIONS Content marketing is not just about creativity. To create content that really resonates with your target audience, you need to track its performance regularly. These metrics will show how effective your content marketing strategy is, tell you what strategies to use and which ones to ditch and help you boost your ROI. Keep in mind that there are no ideal values you should shoot for. They change parallel with the growth of your content marketing strategy.

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90 BEST OF THE WEB: MOST READ

Confessions of a lazy marketer

Xavier Cramer is a performance media specialist at Spinach.

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Digital marketing has been too easy for too long and the rubber band is about to snap.

have a confession to make: I used to be a lazy marketer. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but when I started in the industry, digital marketing put all the targeting tactics at my ﬁngertips. For ‘search engine marketing’ (SEM), it was as simple as serving ads when someone searched for a product. They literally told me what they wanted to see. And over on Facebook, it didn’t take much effort to target people on any number of criteria: age, gender, interests, marital status – you name it. Want to reach a recently engaged, 35-year-old female who’s interested in eating healthily? Not a problem. A few clicks of the mouse and Belinda is seeing my ad about clean eating recipes. Who cares about truly understanding or segmenting your

“It’s now imperative that marketers who feel most at home in the digital world improve their understanding of traditional marketing.” audience when you have this level of targeting available at the press of a button? But marketing has reached an interesting crossroads. The rubber band has snapped. People have had enough when it comes to their data. It’s clear following the recent Facebook issues around Cambridge Analytica that the way marketers use data needs to change and Facebook has already begun making adjustments.

The platform has removed proﬁling of an audience based on email addresses. As a user, it has made it considerably easier to see and edit which advertising buckets you’re in. And recently, at the company’s F8 conference, it was announced that there will be an option for users to clear their data from the platform. And Facebook is not alone. In Europe, there’s been a mad scramble for companies to meet the obligations laid out by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Considering these regulations apply to any company that captures data of people within the EU, Australian companies with European customers need to get their house in order too. Furthermore, browsers are now coming with ad and cookie blocking as a default,

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which is going to do plenty to restrict the lazy marketer. What all this means is that the ‘new age’ digital marketer is in trouble if all they know how to do is lazy targeting, because these options may soon fall by the wayside. In order to survive, they need to break their bubble and start developing a wider knowledge of the marketing landscape. They need to think of themselves not as digital marketers, but as marketers in a digital age. In this new world order, traditional strategic marketing is going to return to the forefront. After being mocked in recent years for not being digitally savvy, traditionalists are about to regain the upper hand. It’s now imperative that marketers who feel most at home in the digital world improve their

“What all this means is that the ‘new age’ digital marketer is in trouble if all they know how to do is lazy targeting, because these options may soon fall by the wayside.” understanding of traditional marketing and develop a greater understanding of their role in the consumer journey. For brands that have been guilty of adopting the lazy marketer’s approach, it’s time to harness ﬁrst-party data. As the Facebooks of the world continue to clamp down on the use of third-party data, owned ﬁrst-party data will become invaluable. A lot of brands

already have this data, but rather than utilising it, lazy marketers have opted for a catalogue of hand-fed targeting options. It may take a little extra work but the opportunity for accurate and personalised messaging is abundant. Personally, I don’t consider myself a lazy marketer anymore. For the past 18 months, I have learned that cross-learning and thinking outside the digital bubble are non-negotiable. But for all the marketers out there still using lazy tactics, be wary. Your days are numbered.

Read more great opinion from contributors at marketingmag.com.au

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92 SAMMARTINO ON SHIFT

Too many instructions and unwanted functions I

f you remember back to when every living room had a box TV and a VCR (videocassette recorder) sitting above or underneath it, that VCR most often had the time afﬁxed to a permanently blinking 12.00am. While it’s easy to blame the owner for not knowing how to program it, the blame should be pointed to the manufacturers who didn’t know how to design it. The functionality of the average VCR was well beyond the capability and intention of most end users. The net result? There was a barely a VCR that got used for more than its two most simple features, either to play a video cassette or to record one while we were out or watching something else. All of the utility of this wonderful technological advance got wasted save for these two features. The lesson for marketers is this: just because you can make a technology do something – add just a few more features – it doesn’t mean you should. Pretty much everything we buy in the modern economy comes with an instruction manual of some sort. We mostly don’t need them, but they’re always there. The products that win the race for the

ever-discerning consumer dollar are those that don’t need one. Just take a look around the average supermarket shelf, pick up a product and turn the package around. Sure enough, a set of instructions on how to consume the product. From shampoo to cereal to instant cups of soup – rinse and repeat, enjoy with milk, add hot water. Nothing too complex, in fact, the manufacturing consumer industrial complex was built around ‘removing the steps’ required in food preparation and caring for the household. They made things easier than the previous option. In fact, the product’s utility plays a secondary role to the simplicity of using it. If the new product form requires a complex procedure to learn how to use it, we’ll never know how much better the product or service is, because consumers will rarely take the time to move up the learning curve to ﬁnd out. Today, the single-minded proposition could never be more important. In a world of exponentially increasing complexity, consumers pine for a simple solution, a solution where usage is intuitive. Just like a banana or an

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The champions of new technologies and platforms will be the marketers and innovators who resist the urge to make things more difficult than they need to be.

Steve Sammartino is an author and futurist who sees the world through marketing eyes. He has held many senior marketing positions and has also built and sold his own start-ups. His latest venture is Sneaky Surf, which is bringing technology into the surf industry. His new book The Lessons School Forgot: How to hack your way through a technology revolution is out now through Wiley. Connect with him and see his latest projects and blog at stevesammartino.com.

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iPhone – where the product itself has the instruction manual built in. As marketers we can think of it as a free prize inside. The iPhone was so simple to use, it only required a ﬁnger to poke around with. While the iPhone is now endowed with inﬁnite potential features, it launched with the bare minimum, all the features of which we’d used before on desktop and laptop machines. The only apps it added to the pre-smart era phone was a graphical web browser, maps and YouTube. There was no App Store. Instead of competing on getting as many

difﬁcult than they need to be. The engineers and technologists leading the charge, always in good faith, wish to build something that lives at the edge of consumer utility, they want to ensure the product is ‘all that it can be’, when most often what we really need is something just a bit better than what we have right now. Think back to the dawn of the personal computer, the internet and even to a time social media amounted to Internet Relay Chat. Until it was plug-and-play, these things were a curiosity for early adopters and tech nerds. This idea of taking an

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The unfortunate element for marketers is the amnesia we suffer when we see the success of an all-conquering platform.

smartphone features the multitude of sensors inside it could handle, Apple focused on getting the core experience right. It was about the simplicity of the move from buttonbased keys to a big glass screen in our pockets. It was the simplicity of sliding between functions seamlessly and making the features radically better than the web connected phones that came before it. Ironically, the launch of the App Store a year later again proved that the single-minded proposition reigns supreme in all things tech. Most of the apps that arrived on the platform did a single thing – one the consumers could understand, and often involved the shift of removing something from the physical world and making it virtual. Unfortunately, technology has a long history of making things more

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incremental approach probably sounds like the absolute antithesis of everything we hear about disruptive technology. The current narrative is always a matter of taking a giant leap to the brave new world. But for one clear reason we need to be incremental at the ﬁrst phase of any technology curve jump: in order to get us into a new technology, a simple adoption process matters much more than the potential utility of the new paradigm. It’s only once enough people are on any emerging platform that we can proliferate the possibilities. The biggest and most difﬁcult job of the marketer is the transition to the new, which is why it needs to be as painless as possible. Only once we have our audience in the new world should we show off all the things we (our new product or service) can do for them.

It’s from the simple that the gamechanging platform and resulting complexity emerges. All complex systems emerge from single-cell organisms, which is why most platforms emerge from solving a single problem ﬁrst before they widen their offer horizontally in the marketplace. The unfortunate element for marketers is the amnesia we suffer when we see the success of an all-conquering platform – we forget the simple innovation that made it possible and instead make wondrous plans of creating a wide and complex platform for our own industry or category. So the challenge for marketers is to resist the temptation to throw features at a technology-weary consumer. To ignore the range launch temptation and go with the one thing that matters, the thing that the shift to something new is all about. The emerging technologies of the next 10 years – IoT, smart homes, blockchain, the energy internet – will all remain in a state of inertia until brave marketers shape the offer to suit a painless consumerfocused transition process. Until any tech reaches a critical point where it needs no instructional manual, it will remain on the annual list of the ‘next big thing to disrupt industry X’. Many of the things on this list will never actually graduate from it. This means that we need real marketers who go deeper enough into what matters, until we think of ourselves as consumer evolution designers. We know that a technology has arrived when we don’t need someone to explain how it works, or how to make it work. But these revolutions never just arrive; they take marketers with the wisdom and courage to offer less, so that their audience can get more. The prize will be big for those that do.

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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94 ANNE RAYNER

#UsFirst Discussions on gender parity in the workplace are progressing, but there’s a long way to go. Anne Rayner says the media and marketing industry must be ﬁrst to inﬂuence real change beyond #MeToo.

Anne Rayner is global head of communications at Kantar TNS. She led the second annual Kantar and Campaign Asia diversity study.

responsibility to drive the cultural tipping point needed to inﬂuence real change.

Gender parity discussions in the last year Kantar launched our ﬁrst study into the state of play in the Asia Paciﬁc region last year, learning that there was no shortage of ambition among women working in the media and marketing industry. However, for all the rhetoric around equality, many women felt that bias still existed and was holding them back from reaching their full potential. Since then we’ve witnessed a global shift in the gender debate. The #MeToo movement exposed the prevalence of sexual harassment, especially within the workplace, while new transparency laws have revealed the true extent of gender pay gaps. The debate has become louder and more forceful – gender inequality is still a pervasive issue and needs to be addressed. Our second study, undertaken in March and April, assessed how the situation has progressed, how both women and men feel about the gender dynamics in the workplace and, importantly, how awareness is changing.

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he gender culture of all businesses permeates every aspect of day-to-day work – respect for women, meeting dynamics, chance of harassment – and needs to be shifted if change is to happen. As people open their eyes to the gender realities and accept that there are imbalances, we should be observing more carefully and calling out bad behaviours and stereotypes. Our industry has one of the biggest responsibilities to clean up our act internally and in how we communicate our brands. The recent announcement of the world’s ﬁrst independent national inquiry into sexual harassment in the workplace by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) underpins what sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins says follows on from the #MeToo movement. She told ABC News, “The timing was right, the appetite for change is there, and we have all the functions to make sure we can help Australia lead the globe on ﬁnding new solutions for sexual harassment.” It’s a positive move, but as an industry, our media and marketing companies have a huge

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Unfortunately, the prevalence of sexual harassment in the APAC media and marketing industry reﬂects the #MeToo movement.

Experience and observation of sexual harassment

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Half of all women and a quarter of men report they’ve personally experienced workplace harassment that encompasses both physical or verbal actions. Two in five women and one in five men also observed it happening to others. In short, 53 percent of women and 30 percent of men have seen or experienced this behaviour – it is in plain sight. The most commonly experienced form of harassment was degrading comments or sexual innuendo, with particularly high levels in countries with a more ‘masculine’ office culture such as Australia and New Zealand.

Recognition is growing There were signs of what could be done to address the problem, yet organisational involvement is rare – only 14 percent of those who have experienced it or seen it told their employer. Those surveyed said that the most important thing that would increase the likelihood of reporting is the knowledge that their career would not be damaged. Statements like “de-stigmatising sexual harassment so I don’t feel embarrassed about it, like it was somehow my fault and I am to blame” and “as a man, reporting an incident of sexual harassment will destroy my career and credibility” must be taken seriously.

Create comfortable environments There is high correlation between

companies where employees felt men and women were not treated equally and the incidence of feeling pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. In a workplace where women are expected to be ‘nice’ and ‘accommodating’, they are more likely to experience male dominance of meetings – 59 percent, in fact. Having women in senior leadership positions is a check on this kind of behaviour – the presence of a female CEO within a business was a factor that halved the amount of male dominance reported. To really make a difference, however, a much more holistic approach to company culture and avoiding

This unconscious bias permeates through to how many women believe their gender affects opportunities at work. Two-thirds of women think men had more opportunities to advance their career (compared to just 32 percent of men), while almost half of women surveyed have missed out on an opportunity because of their gender.

Focusing on performance With tension increasing over the impact of these negative assessments on careers, however, Australia’s media and marketing landscape needs to actively demonstrate how and why it is

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Fifty-three percent of women and 30 percent of men have seen or experienced this behaviour – it is in plain sight.

gender stereotyping throughout the business is critical.

Perceptions of judgement Both men and women believe that people have preconceptions about their ability, and this feeling has become more pronounced in the past year, with 85 percent of women and 79 percent of men agreeing. But the difference lies in the reasons why people feel they are judged. Men are more likely to believe that years of experience and their track record deﬁne their standing in the workplace, while women tend to see gender as inﬂuencing the judgement.

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nurturing and rewarding people. By getting our own affairs in order, we can then work harder to showcase gender equity, diversity and inclusion through our brands, advertising and communication. This work is making a difference though and is making industry leaders stop and listen. CEOs of the six major media holding companies signed a ‘Mandate for Change’ in May agreeing to implement steps to drive change including creating equality action plans, offering ﬂexible work options, development and mentoring of women, and reviewing pay parity. It’s now time for us all to personally commit to change.

THE SIMPLICITY ISSUE

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Embracing designed complexity Simplicity is one thing, but Sérgio Brodsky says brands that make the most of designed complexity may just uncover value-creating wrinkles of opportunity.

L Sérgio Brodsky is an internationally experienced brand marketing professional and scholar of The Marketing Academy. Having worked for the world’s leading strategic communications agencies, he is a proven thoughtleader, regularly being published and featured on high-proﬁle conferences and festivals worldwide. He is passionate about cities and culture and the role of brands and technology in society. Sérgio is multilingual, holds a BA in IP law and an MBA in global brand strategy and innovation. Follow him on Twitter: @brandKzar

ife is not simple. Recognise that and short-live the dangerous comfort of ‘ignorance is bliss’. Complexity is good. The world is complex and when it comes to the brands we develop to work in that world, they must match it. Confusion. This is the enemy. We do not wish to be confused, befuddled and frustrated. The argument against complexity is due to the common misunderstanding that complexity leads to confusion. No, it doesn’t have to. This is what good strategy is about: making complex things simple to understand, easy to implement, and delightful to experience. In fact, there are no two people that experience the same thing in the exact same way. So, if human experiences aren’t simple, why should brands be? The best brands are indeed those that are able to keep this complexity intact, without falling into the trap of dumbing down its richness.

Think Converse. Throughout the decades of being around, Converse has created a multidimensional brand, based on layers of accumulated cultural meaning. Instead of being part of some prefabricated brand experience, these cultural connotations come from memories that are simultaneously individual and part of the collective unconscious. Or, think Google. It became such a vast organisation that an extra top layer of complexity – its parent entity Alphabet – had to be created to enable further growth. According to London Business School professor Julian Birkinshaw, not all complexity is bad for business – but executives don’t always know what kind their company has. It could be: ✺ Imposed complexity: includes laws, industry regulations and interventions by non-government organisations. It is not typically manageable by companies and is most often challenging for brand managers. ✺ Inherent complexity: is intrinsic to the business, and can only be ditched by exiting a portion of it; like Ford’s reversed fortune from near-bankruptcy to proﬁtability following a series of divestments that included power brands like Land Rover and Jaguar, sold to Tata. ✺ Unnecessary complexity: arises from growing misalignment between the needs of the organisation and the processes supporting it. It is easily managed once identiﬁed. ✺ Designed complexity: results from choices about where the business operates, what it sells, to whom and how. Companies can remove it, but this could mean simplifying valuable wrinkles in their business model.

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96 SÉRGIO BRODSKY

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The term ‘designed complexity’ is almost interchangeable with brand strategy. It's a series of complex choices made to address consumers’ needs or unarticulated desires and in a way that creates and sustains value. Disney is possibly one of the most complex and successful brands out there. Back in 1957, sketches of an entire business and brand ecosystem made by Walt Disney himself were published. The sketch includes no fewer than 14 business streams. These included films, TV, music, publications, a magazine, comic strips, Disneyland, merchandise licensing, shops and more. Dozens of sketched lines connect the business streams in specific, overlapping and intersecting ways. Film “provides characters” for merchandise licensing. Merchandise licensing “promotes park thru puzzles”. Disneyland “provides article material” for Walt Disney magazine, which “plugs films and stars” of Disney movies, which “feed tunes and talent to” music. It continues. This designed complexity clearly emphasised the valuecreating ‘wrinkles’ of its franchise entertainment model. Disney’s strategic vision sustained growth where a central film asset – in very precise ways – infused value into, and was in turn supported by, an array of related entertainment assets. There are three aspects that inform Disney’s strategy: ✺ Foresight about an industry’s evolution, including relevant technological change or evolving consumer preferences: TV “provides subjects for later use in longer theatre product”, for example. ✺ Insight about the distinctive and valuable assets and resources of the firm: music “keeps films

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Keep this complexity intact, without falling into the trap of dumbing down its richness.

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in mind when they’re out of circulation”, for example. ✺ Cross-sight regarding the ability to identify adjacent assets uniquely valuable to the firm or assets with value that others are simply unable to perceive: film studio “fan mail fills out mailing list for [art corner shop] catalogue”, for example. While simple and clear as an articulation, this is a complex approach that gets even more sophisticated in reality. Has this been an issue? Following recent mammoth acquisitions and the newly named Marvel Stadium, complexity feels quite magical for Disney. From a media communications point of view, designed complexity was best manifested by the ‘transmedia storytelling’ methodology, coined by Professor Henry Jenkins, then head of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Comparative Media Studies Program. Transmedia storytelling aims at turning an economic imperative into a creative opportunity. As brands have less time to give audiences the chance to identify with their assets and experiences, transmedia storytelling communications becomes an effective extension of a brand. For example, during the promotion

period of the film 2012, a microsite was created to explain the science behind the ‘end of the world mythology’ that greatly defined the core idea of the film. That means, creating new product and media communications developments that extend the movie experience and sales. The driving force behind transmedia storytelling is the growing numbers of media channels and the convergence between these enabling stories to be told through different media like films, books, games, websites, toys and others. This way, people can obtain new elements of the story by consuming different products and services enabling the creation, continuity and marketing of brands where every touch point becomes a new, fresh entry point, ripe for participation. A great example of transmedia storytelling franchise is the BBC series Dr Who. After the first series, the BBC introduced a first novel about the series. This book was written based on content the fans created. Years later came the audio CD. An audio CD with extra episodes was successfully launched. BBC also introduced a large selection of web-based material like video clips, podcasts, audio files and pictures. This broad transmedia succeeded in establishing a very successful and entertaining world for a diverse audience for Dr Who. Who knows what new technology could enable in terms of new formats and experiences? Boundaries have already blurred. Free your brand from the category that once defined it and reimagine it as a category of its own. It’s neither an easy nor a simple ambition, and that’s a good thing! As Albert Einstein once said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

THE TRUST ISSUE

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Way Out

Associate professor Con Stavros is the program director of postgraduate marketing studies at RMIT University and one of Australia’s leading commentators on marketing matters. Tweet him @constavros.

ohn Wooden, the winningest coach in the world of American college basketball, had a simple philosophy for success: it’s the little things that count, no matter how complex the battle. Wooden, who in the 1960s and ’70s guided UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to 10 national championships over 12 years, had the pick of the best high school players in the country. The elite youngsters turned up each year, eager for the opportunity that placed them on a conveyor to fame. Few nervous debutants expected, however, that their ﬁrst practice would literally involve a pair of white socks and step-by-step instruction from Wooden on how to put them on. Wooden reasoned that incorrect socks meant blisters and those little impediments meant suboptimum performances from the cogs in his winning machine. Putting on shoes was lesson number two. None of us will die wishing our lives had been more complex. Alas, many marketers revel in complexity. This is sometimes fuelled by a misplaced mentality that rocket science is needed to ‘sell’ and the

similarly ﬂawed thinking that bigger is better. Marketing is best done in simple ways. Socks and shoes. While this may seem at odds with the ‘fast fail’ philosophy, it doesn’t preclude innovation, nor dexterity. It simply prioritises planning. As Wooden intoned, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” I have four simple marketing communication processes that I constantly return to: AMPM. Audience, motivation, positioning and message. It begins with the audience, an understanding of which is critical. While audiences are often segmented by demographic, geographic and psychographic insights, what matters most is behaviour. What connection do we have to this audience in terms of loyalty – if any – and how are they connected to the category? From there it is easy to set up a pathway of practice and a sequential process of actions you can engage with. You wouldn’t speak to your most loyal customers in the same way as you would to those new to the category, so prioritising behaviour is crucial.

We then move to their motivations and can simplify the cognitive and emotional processes involved by understanding that consumers essentially only make a purchase for two reasons: 1. They perceive a problem and seek a remedy, or 2. They are looking for a reward to stimulate their senses or social standing. The distinction is critical, and the primary reason must be identiﬁed as it will dominate – allowing two different marketing paths to be explored. For problem-seekers, the product becomes hero, rushing to the rescue. For reward-seekers the product becomes desirable and amiable, delivering pleasure and gains. Positioning then comes to the fore, with brands playing a ‘game of minds’ with the audience and their motivations to seek priority over competitors. Good positioning is critical and evolves from a simple truth: what is in the mind of the consumer is far more relevant than what is in the mind of the marketer. Outstanding marketers almost always reﬂect this consumer perspective. It is a subtle game. You only need to edge out a competitor by the smallest margin to win a battle for a mind. Simple positioning strategies will resonate loudest given consumers will not be overcomplicating things in their own minds. The message is the ultimate connection between marketer and consumer. Great messages are jigsaw puzzle pieces that the consumer can easily put together, thus creating the sense (or illusion) that they have persuaded themselves – not that they have been ‘sold’ to. The challenge is making the pieces easy to collect in the consumer’s travels and enticing enough that they want to align them in their minds. It’s a challenge for the modern marketer. Keeping it simple is the right mantra here as well. Coach Wooden, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 99, would surely agree.

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98 WAY OUT

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