Remember the mission statement? Now the talk is of brand purpose

As with much to do with the written word, encapsulating an idea into a few succinct lines is a tougher task than writing a lot.

When I worked in the corporate world, mission statements were a fashion for a while. Writing something short and to the point to describe the purpose of a company is not a job for a team exercise but nonetheless our board of directors decided to embark on writing a mission statement that way. Back in,  I guess the 1980's, it was not uncommon to see these texts framed and hung on display in Reception. They were a bit like the embroidered biblical quotes with which my grandmother was fond of adorning the walls of her home, or placing above the fireplace.

Here is an example mission statement from a Fortune 500 company.

"To combine aggressive strategic marketing with quality products and services at competitive prices to provide the best insurance value for consumers."

Probably fairly typical, but what is it for? Is it a mantra to be repeated at the start of each day to remind employees of what they should be doing? Is it to impress customers? Is it to display in reception? Either way a web site claims to be able to knock out a Mission Statement within the hour. Perhaps that puts it in perspective. Maybe they also write mottos for Christmas crackers.

But hold on. Marketing Week has noted a current trend to define 'Brand Purpose'. Wow what's that? Apparently it is the "deepest expression of a brand" - "a winning combination of brand heritage, positioning, mission statement and social conscience." Guess that will take more than an hour to come up with.

Here are some examples quoted in the article:-

• Amazon's brand purpose is "freedom of choice" and you thought they sold books and an increasing heap of other stuff online.
• Coke doesn't sell fizzy drinks, it "inspires moments of happiness" and
• Johnnie Walker whiskey is " celebrating journeys of progress and success." 

Perhaps they should turn to real estate novelists to come up with this stuff rather than a one hour online service. Or better still ensure the customer base continues to receive positive
messages that consistently explain what differentiates your brand from its competitors and why thy should stick with it.

Dogs, babies, weird photos, odd videos, quotations and press releases

With Facebook spending $19billion on buying WhatsApp I  only hope their user profiles are different to mine.

Most evenings, before dinner I skim through the social media stuff on my iPad, primarily to see what my social media savvy clients are talking about. The same messages flash across Facebook, LinkedIn,  and Twitter, none us Instagram or Pinterest. Long ago I  culled the people I follow on Twitter to clients only, made LinkedIn connections with people I  actually know and abandoned Facebook, at least in terms of active participation. According to a report published by International Business Times, the young are leaving Facebook and the largest growth at 80.4% is the 55 and above age group. So as the youth defect to Snapchat and Tumblr, the Facebook audience is getting older. Oddly that corresponds with my experience that the people I know that use it at all are mainly retired, or old and still working. But not all. The weird cocktail of messages and photos that someone thinks funny or appealing are of cute dogs, babies, pictures of wise sayings on cards, quirky videos and engineering press releases I get elsewhere - or actually everywhere.

Now suppose the creators of Facebook had been asked to make a pitch in the Dragon's Den. Would the pitch have gone along the lines of, "we are a couple of university drop-outs writing code day and night for a web site for people like us locked away in a room who don't really socialise - and we need a few million dollars of your money to fund us." A rigorous analysis would have exposed a lack of a business plan and big questions over income. And yet they  embarked on buying Instagram at $1 billion and now WhatsApp at a whopping $19 billion! Yes billions, not millions. When the quarterly results were announced at the end of last month, mobile advertising account for over half the ad revenue with CEO Zuckerberg saying 2013 was the year we turned our business into a mobile business.

A big issue here is despite the big numbers is a mobile advertising presence on Facebook a good deal for B2B  marketers. It's not easy to demonstrate sales resulting from Facebook engagement amongst the clients I look at. The thing is does it work?

Are agencies staying relevant?

In the fast moving digital marketing world, agencies are having to evolve.

Traditionally creative strategy has been driven by the advertising agency, a role apparently being challenged by PR agencies as content assumes greater importance. Into this space come digital agencies who understand the technology, but more often than not have yet to understand the client's business because of the short-term nature of the relationship.

Why do agencies prefer a  long-term relationship? Simple. There is a big investment in understanding the client's business, typically a role driven by the account executive. The agency analyses,  researches and identifies the product proposition. This clarification of pinning it all down to a few crucial words is a skill in itself. Clients are frequently too close to the subject to be objective and further more unable to express the proposition in words that a customer will relate to. Identifying the essence of the product proposition, then enshrining that in a creative wrapper that gains attention amongst the target audience. The vehicle for the advertising communication has been mainly visual - print and video and the media used to gain attention.

But here's the thing, in the current digital era it is largely a text only universe driven by position in things like search results. Prominence is down to position rather than crafting an advertisement that attracts attention. And new technology driven stuff keeps coming along. Some clients are very keen to embrace new media whereas traditionally agencies in b-2-b haven't jumped into advertising in new titles until circulation is verified, editorial content evaluated and in short it has become established. Digital is faster and where increasingly people are spending time. More a case of jumping on a bandwagon then.

What people though? Are they customers and prospects? We have clients with strongly held and quite different views. Take Facebook. Opinions range from, "it's for children - not engineers' to "it's out of date" by way of those who embrace the channel and are busy posting messages. So what are agencies to do? Be skilled in everything, because it's not just Facebook, but Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and hundreds of less well known competing vehicles?

Successful agencies will be those that provide the most effective campaigns for clients embracing whatever technology is most relevant. Agencies that seek to sell the output of their studio production capability will struggle.

The Stage Awards - Photos

Photos of Ben Collier accepting the Unsung Hero Award on behalf of Andy Collier's family at The Stage annual ceremony on 31st January.

Ben Collier with his Dad's award from The Stage

Unsung Hero of the Year 2014 - Andy Collier

Andy's sister, Liz and his son Ben flanked by Robin Towney and Mark White of the ABTT.

Setting the creative strategy

Advertising agencies have traditionally taken the creative lead, but with the rising demand for content, PR agencies are making a claim for strategic leadership.

With PR no longer just about obtaining media coverage, embracing social media sharing and content creation, the old rules and demarcations are changing. But then again there have always been turf wars between advertising and PR agencies because although display advertising or editorial coverage are the lead products for each respectively, they merely head up a raft of other creative services. Product brochures and newsletters being typical examples which arguably differ on content derivation from copywriters versus journalists, but other products become less attributable to one camp or the other, but can be profitable work and worth fighting for. And then again there are the digital agencies that also thrive on content consumption.

To the typical b-2-b business this may not matter. May be a good marketing manager can set and hold the line on strategic direction and micro manage external agencies. But then again creative concepts are one of the reasons you hire an external agency in the first case. Undoubtably creative, relevant and 'on message' content is essential for not only being taken seriously on the web, but also being found on there too.

Because of the immediacy of content sharing the author needs to be well informed, skilled at communicating, mindful of legal pitfalls and perhaps wary of revealing confidential information. Hardly a job for a junior employee and may explain why chief executives are responding to twitter messages?

Harlequin launch info graphic series

TML client Harlequin Floors is using info graphics to communicate important statistics about a the risks of dancing on poor quality dance floors.
  
[Source: Infographic by uk.harlequinfloors.com]

Unsung Hero Award goes to Andy Collier at The Stage annual awards event today

At The Stage's annual awards event at Dury Lane today, we are delighted to report the award to the late Andy Colllier.

"The annual unsung hero award, which recognises figures in the performing arts industry who operate outside the limelight, was presented posthumously to theatre consultant Andy Collier.

Chair of the judging panel, The Stage deputy editor Alistair Smith, said: “It was another really tough year for the judges across all the categories and, really, any of our shortlisted organisations would have made worthy winners, such is the quality of theatre provision across the UK.

“However, these were the best of the best, and the judging panel would like to congratulate all our winners for everything they’ve achieved over the last 12 months.”

The winners in full are:

London theatre of the year, sponsored by Haagen Dazs

Hampstead Theatre

Regional theatre of the year, sponsored by Audience Systems

Sheffield Theatres

Fringe theatre of the year, sponsored by Encore Insure

Southwark Playhouse

School of the year, sponsored by Nick Hern Books

National Youth Theatre

Producer of the year, sponsored by Ticketmaster

Michael Grandage Company

Unsung Hero, sponsored by the Association of British Theatre Technicians

Andy Collier"

Is UK business and employment changing?

With the UK economy now growing at the fastest rate since 2007 we ask, has the business landscape changed since the days before the credit crunch?

The BBC reports today that "the UK service sector - which makes up more than three-quarters of economic output - rose by 0.8% in the fourth quarter, the ONS said, matching its performance in the previous quarter. And the manufacturing sector grew by 0.9%."

Looking back to previous recessions it is not simply a question of seeing  sales volumes ramp up as the recession ends, but possibly the return to growth is driven by some fundamental restructuring of how businesses are organised. And how this has changed is important to b-2-b marketers to ensure marketing communications are now delivered to the right target audiences through the right channels.

It was recently reported that "a quarter of scientific and technical professionals .. work on a freelance basis, choosing which project to apply their skills to, according to research cited by PCG, the freelancing association." Apparently there are 1.72 million such freelancers contributing £95 billion to the economy! Freelancing is offering ways for companies to grow while minimising risk and cost.

Meanwhile consider another statistic, "2.5 million businesses are now using a home base." Those businesses now represent 52 per cent of the total number of small companies in Britain according to research by Direct Line.

Working with freelancers from a home office myself it is easy to relate to these figures and it is unsurprising that 99.2% of all UK  businesses are classed as small, employing 50 or less and 74% have no employees at all! Why is this not surprising? Entrepreneurs and professionals don't necessarily want to spend their time managing staff and dealing with a raft of employment legislation when instead they can focus on selling their own expertise using a growing pool of networked freelance talent digitally connected to mobile or home based devices. As the Prime Minister said recently, "Our country owes a huge debt of gratitude to those who make their living as freelancers and entrepreneurs. You have not only taken your own future into your own hands, but you are the engine of our economy and economic revival."

B-2-B not just boring business to boring business anymore

An interesting article about b-2-b marketing – read the full story here. 

"Times change. The b-to-b sector accounts for over 50% of the U.S. gross domestic product."

 “B-to-b often got kicked around as the poor stepchild of consumer advertising. While exceptions abound, the stereotype was always that b-to-b marketing was boring. B-to-b companies did little TV advertising and spent most of their media dollars on trade publications. You had industrial companies selling boring products to other boring companies. All that anyone cared about was price and product features.

As a category, b-to-b makes a huge contribution to the economy, job creation and innovation. Now marketers are just as likely to engage with business customers on personal channels like Facebook and blogs as we are to engage with them in trade publications.

Today, no one would call b-to-b anybody's stepchild. With the explosion of social and content platforms, most consumer and b-to-b companies have access to the same communications channels and can compete on an equal footing. 

… the convergence of consumer and b-to-b creates exciting opportunities for both clients and agencies who want to break out of old marketing habits." 

Is social media becoming more relevant to B-2-B Marketers?

B-2-B marketers have traditionally used tools like White Papers to inform, educate and nurture prospects for their products and services.

But a new study featured in Advertising Age suggests, "Buyers expect to soon give more weight to social content than editorial and white papers." Research by IDG Connect amongst IT buyers is quoted as saying, "When compared to editorial content and vendor-created content, social media is currently the least critical source of information for IT buyers. But in two years, buyers expect that equation to flip as they increase the weight given to social media from 31% to 37% for influencing investment decisions. In the same period the weight given to editorial and vendor content will drop to 31% and 32% respectively." The study also noted that 86% of the group now use social media in their purchase decision process. Buyers engaging in the social media networks are apparently more interested in educational content than transactional or promotional content and this flags up the importance of providing a clear path to the appropriate content, which of course might be a white paper on the company web site!

One impact of the growing importance of social media is the need for B-2-B marketers to have expertise in both traditional marketing and in these new areas of digital marketing. And of course to make space in the marketing budget as digital channels are not necessarily displacing traditional routes but are fragmenting the communications opportunities.

Digital marketing - what is being said about your products?

Back in the 1990s the term 'new media' was spoken about in advertising agencies to describe creative work that typically ended up on CDs rather than in print. Today the term 'digital marketing' is more commonly in vogue. Digital marketing is used to describe the use of content delivery via social media to some form of computing platform, mobile device or smart phone. Interestingly it is creatives  who have coined the terms rather than engineers. Engineers would more likely consider 'digital' as an alternative to 'analogue'.

It is not just terminology but the whole mindset associated with digital marketing right from creation to consumption and subsequent analysis that is changing. I  have visited a few digital agencies in the last few months which still  make a nod to the minimalist decor of the traditional advertising agency plus what appears to be a nursery playroom in one - for the young code writers perhaps. Then at the other end of the process there are the analytics providers. Well it isn't just analytics but aggregation of what is happening out in this digital landscape that is talking about your brand or product. It is not merely response to what you or your company put out and have some type of control over, but conversations about your stuff between users who don't include anyone from your company at all. And it is not just about looking at numbers as with say Google Analytics, but tapping into conversations which might be ill informed and harmful to the brand. So you need to know what they are saying.

Some pretty smart software helps company marketers get some handle on what is  going on out there by aggregating news, chat, comments and reviews - even down to identifying requests for information from potential prospects. Options to join in a number of global conversations allow relevant content to be re-tweeted or posted to other social media channels and no doubt negative comment responded to positively. It offers real time interaction, but did the typical b-2-b marketer expect this is where digital marketing might go and are they set up for instant content creation?

Content creation and delivery

As digital marketing expands, the demand for quality content grows.

 For the last few centuries, news, information and knowledge was primarily printed on paper documents such as newspapers, magazines and books. The life of newspapers was short, of useful books much much longer. Today few would think of commencing a search for information amongst the dusty shelves of a library. Most people go straight to a computer, smart phone or tablet and then to the one all knowing oracle - Google. And what they want is good quality, relevant information - quickly.
Where that information is research prior to a purchase, unless it is a subject the person knows well, the process may start with 'education' that explains and outlines options to create a better informed purchase decision - before checking out actual product models, price and availability. If that educational entry is provided by an expert in the field, then that may well create trust when later on the buying phase begins.

Although we talk about a proliferation of media, in reality the only divide is between storage on paper and digital storage. Advertising agencies  have slowly evolved the terminology from talking about 'new media' to being a 'digital' agency. The gateway to the digital archives is dominated by Google and unless your search result comes high up on page one, who is going to scroll through the next few hundred, thousand or million results? Quality, relevant content is rewarded by high ranking, you only have to see how highly Wikipedia appears on most searches.

Creating compelling content that takes the moral high ground can be the foot in the door, once the role of field salesmen to hook a prospect early in the purchase process. This may be assisted by placing content on sites that already enjoy high ranking and get links back to your on website in return for providing expert content that improves their position. So not only is there a growing need for great content, but also the means of delivering that collateral to the right prospects.

They can't do what we do ...

Before the widespread adoption of the web there were only two significant options for a business to gain attention for its products in the media – to buy expensive advertising, or buy PR for third party column space.

Aficionados of the Mad Men television series set in the 60s will have gained some insight into the former excesses of the advertising world through the fictional character of creative director Donald Draper. A world inhabited by snappily suited ad men with a prodigious appetite for the consumption of alcohol, smoking and the pursuit of attractive women. Set in a fictional advertising agency on New York’s Madison Avenue home to the advertising industry with the name ‘Madison Avenue’ used as shorthand for the industry itself and hence the play on words for the series title. The only evidence of work appeared to be scribbling doodles on restaurant napkins or more frequently lying on a couch in their extravagantly appointed offices ostensibly thinking up creative ideas and client meetings to ‘sell’ a concept. The expensive offices and lavish lifestyle called for clients with big budgets to bank roll advertising land. My own occasional glimpses of London’s West End advertising agencies in the 70s showed grand offices and generous expense accounts were normal here too. I cannot vouch for the rest of the life style of the ad men.

PR agencies so far as I am aware have not enjoyed the accolade of an award -winning TV series, but the practitioners representing political clients have collectively been referred to as ‘spin doctors’ which is hardly a good image for the profession. Individually the nickname of  ‘Prince of Darkness’ and later the ‘Dark Lord’ were appended to Lord Mandelson who as Director of Communications helped rebrand the Labour Party as ‘New’ Labour and of course there was the infamous former German Minister of Propaganda, Dr Josef Goebbels who explored the darkest depths of news manipulation.  

Then along came the Internet and the World Wide Web. The media opened up to even the smallest business, not just locally, but globally. Since publishing Techniques in Technical Marketing in 2000, the web has moved into a new phase with social media offering alternatives to the main ‘above the line’ media options.

This blog is intended as a simple introduction to where marketing has been headed in the last decade and some things that owners of small to medium size businesses in the B-2-B area should know including when to bring in outsourced marketing expertise..

Last word from the fictional creative director, “They can’t do what we do and they hate us for it.” The thing is the media might be more accessible but the creative expertise that causes one manufacturer’s product to be preferred over another is not.   

Confusing features with benefits

Product features are often assumed to also be benefits, but this may not be true.

Because features and benefits are often linked together, there is an implied assumption that all features also have a benefit and this thinking then extends to the belief that potential customers will be able to figure out for themselves why those product features are beneficial to them. Marketing text that talks about 'feature packed' products may be interpreted by customers as suggesting the product is likely to be complicated and difficult to understand.

The problem is that adding features has become something of a tactical 'arms' race to outstrip the competition and meet or exceed specification criteria. Charts listing a whole range of features with ticks to indicate where a product excels and others fall short are quite popular for technical products from cars to consumer electronics and of course b-2-b products too. But these are what the product does. The reality is that the more complex - feature packed - the product, the less the features actually get used. Just look at a control surface that has been used for a while - a remote, key board, control desk - and the pattern of wear and grime will reveal which keys are regularly used and which are pristine and untouched.

Benefits may be based more on an emotional consideration than an analysis of how the features stack up. The decision to purchase a television may depend more on what it might look like in the living room, the quality of the picture and how much it costs. There is an implied assumption it will do a few other things like hooking up to a sat. box and DVD, but beyond that the extensive range of other features are unlikely to sway the argument.  Mobile phones have become feature rich, but in terms of sustaining a telephone conversation in an area of poor coverage or when a train plunges into a tunnel remain just as challenging to the user as they were in the early days. In the b-2-b sector product development has too often been driven by what features  the competitors offer, then going one better. The rationale is to create differentiated products rather than compete in a commodity market on price alone. But unless the features are translated into customer benefits and explained in a way that the prospective customer understands and appreciates, these features risk being excluded from the purchase decision.  

What the marketing messages should focus on is convincing the prospective customers that the product has benefits that they can relate to and can actually appreciate. Features that make the product easy to use, improve productivity, save money, even bestow prestige - what they don't want is a list of features. We recently took delivery of a new television that offers a handbook only on screen which tantalisingly lists its 'features' some about its own proprietry system but unfortunately no explanation of how to access or use them.

‘Word of mouth’ and ‘viral’ marketing

An e-mail arrived today with an invitation to attend a networking breakfast scheduled for 6.45a.m. in a nearby hotel. The supporting data made impressive claims for the number of business leads such events had already generated elsewhere and concluded with the exhortation to bring plenty of business cards. The underlying theory, presumably to provide a face-to-face business exchange, is, at first, one that is not easy to square with the marketing concept of identifying your target market and then the target audience you need to address with your proposition. 

The assumption might be that the target market is other local business people, which may work well if that is the full extent your target market, but if you operate in a niche global market it may attract just a tiny portion of your potential audience. But what it does raise is the whole issue of recommendation, something we are familiar with at a local level. People are happy to recommend a good plumber, a dentist or a good service experience from a local garage and this form of ‘word of mouth’ marketing is extremely valuable. Personal recommendation is far more powerful than a manufacturer’s own claim and if that third party endorsement comes from a respected person in the market, then it enjoys credibility. 

This support can be utilised through news placement, case studies and use of attributable quotations. Having opinion leaders endorse your products or services also builds trust quickly and the advice they dispense is a powerful marketing tool. Recently there have been references to a concept claiming ‘you are only six degrees of separation from anybody else in the planet’, implying that through six friends of friends a message will reach everyone. Certainly within most industries news, good or bad, travels faster than you might imagine and with the Internet the exponential speed of virus dispersion is demonstrably rapid. 

A concept known as ‘viral marketing’ has been defined as ‘any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.’ A classic example was how Hotmail propagated so quickly, by giving away a free e-mail address and service, promoted by a tag line on every e-mail users sent to an increasing and widening circle of friends and associates. Then came Facebook that didn't appear to start with any conventional marketing and of course Linked-In is the online version that saves attending early breakfast meetings!

So whether it is ‘viral marketing’, ‘word of mouth’ or ‘networking’, the ability to influence your target audience through others is an important marketing device.