Ash cloud returned, blew over, returned, blew over …
Greece went bust
Greece was rescued
The UK voted
The UK was thrown into political turmoil
The Eagles sent the Owls down

Oh, and one other thing – The World Cup bandwagon got well and truly rolling!

Back in London this week and I feel I can’t move for brands getting in on the act of hyping both the event and England’s chances (2nd round exit to Germany?).

For some brands the link to World Cup 2010 is clear. Adidas? Check. Carlsberg? Yes I can see their relevance to the competition too and the “teamtalk” execution is certainly rousing if it fails to quite get the hairs on the back of my neck standing as high on a second viewing. But Kit Kat and Mars though? C’mon! Give me a break …. (sorry!)

Anyway, the brand that has executed a World Cup idea most beautifully has to be Louis Vuitton. It’s here and it’s cool. It has Zidane, Pele and Maradona in it so how could it not be? Even if their link to the beautiful game is tenuous at best.

http://www.louisvuittonjourneys.com/legends

By
Richard Mabbott
Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning
GyroHSR

Pitching for new business has become just such a balance. It is no longer enough to win through on great creative work or strategy alone, nor is getting on like a house on fire with the client enough to secure a successful result. Because today the process is, more often than not, driven by purchasing departments.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we work with many purchasing departments who do an excellent job (and if you’re one of them and you’re reading this, then I’m definitely talking about you), many of which have mastered the art of achieving value for money whilst simultaneously allowing for successful agency partnerships. They do this by taking the time to understand the requirements of their own organisation and the partner agency alike; they understand the importance of organisational fit and of creating an environment where the exponential effect of true collaboration can be harnessed; and then they crunch the numbers, crunch them a bit more and strike a hard (yet fair) price too…

We’re lucky enough here at GyroHSR to work with many purchasing teams who partner with us in just this way, and I can see a direct correlation between those accounts we get the most satisfaction from working on and those purchasing departments who strike the balance between brain and heart.

But I’ve recently experienced pitch processes where that other kind of value, that which can’t be measured in price, hourly rate cards and discounts, appeared to get forgotten. In some extreme cases this has meant that the ‘i’s were dotted and the ‘t’s crossed before a brushstroke of creativity had been applied or a single human being met another in the name of chemistry. Where on reflection, the pitch result was determined by the price long before the agency got to show the work. Now that can’t be right can it? I struggle to think that even Mr Spock would agree with it.

Price is important (especially in these times), but there is always negotiation. More often than not a common ground can be found. Surely, finding what it is you actually require should always be the first step. And what price the wrong agency at the right price?

For me it’s about partnerships: mutually, commercially-beneficial partnerships between organisations and their agencies. Finding this ideal balance should surely be the aim of any purchasing department in setting out on the pitch process – to match their Captain Kirk with Doctor Spock and rocket their marketing efforts into hyperspace…

Chris Hare
VP, International Client Service

Mike Tittel
Senior Vice President-
Global Practice Leader-Digital

This has also been posted to Mike’s personal blog: http://artistinthefield.blogspot.com/

Ferruccio’s secret? Realising that a simple element he was selling as functional, effective and reliable, could expand outwards into something that was beautiful, awe-inspiring and world-famous. Now, of course, Feruccio could have stuck to turning out his tractor clutch for tractors. But he didn’t. He realised he was only selling a percentage of what his product was actually worth, and went after the remaining potential.

It’s a lesson direct marketers would do well to learn. No, it’s a lesson direct marketers must learn, or risk finding themselves staring into the abyss. For too long, we have marched into pitches talking about data, targeting, response, measurement – all that solid, commercial stuff that we know budget-conscious clients want to hear. “Don’t spend your cash on those beautiful, but intangible brand awareness ads”, we urged. “Go for DM. It works, and here are some cold, hard (if boring) stats to prove it.”

And, for the most part, that approach has worked. Who wouldn’t want to engage with consumers in an intimate way and be able to track where every penny is spent? But the landscape has changed. The consumer has changed. And if direct marketers don’t learn to sell everything else they can deliver, then they can kiss a share of tomorrow’s marketing spend, goodbye.

So why now? What’s changed?

Well, the direct marketing industry has been focusing on the clutch – the fundamental cornerstone of its heritage. We’ve been selling our targeting and measurement. Which is great. Only now, everyone else is starting to walk the walk – or they are at least talking the talk. We all know that with a long history of understanding customer data, direct marketers are those best placed to navigate the new digital landscape for clients, but it’s unquestionable that other disciplines are staking a claim on cross-channel targeting and measurement.

Add to that the lightning speed at which consumer channels have fragmented and multiplied and the ensuing land-grab this has created. Where direct was once a one-to-one channel, it has fast become a one-to-many channel, and this has fundamentally changed the way we must operate.  We predict that we won’t see disciplines drop off, but we will see them continue to multiply.

Taking this new landscape into account forces us to reassess the way we view disciplines and channels within it. Contrary to what some may think, direct marketing is not just a tactical tool, it is a strategic approach. It can build brands and it can create an intimacy that no other approach can. Believe it, because if you don’t, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you might be left to turn the lights out as everyone else embraces a new era somewhere in the future. This is an approach we had to adopt when launching a US campaign for agricultural and construction equipment giants John Deere. (If only these essays were themed ‘DM…and tractors’…).The challenge was clear: John Deere wanted to enter a new digger category. The audience was contractors, landscapers, farmers and dealers. So a simple offline DM piece, targeted and tracked, might have done the job.

It might have done. But then, it might have gone down as another classic example of the real potential of direct marketing going well and truly unexploited. Instead, we created a campaign that incorporated the stalwarts of direct marketing and used them to create something much, much bigger.

“Smackdown” involved staging a series of head-to-head battles featuring the top machines in a ‘robot wars’- style duel. The events—the hill climb, visibility test, power lift and serviceability—were based on real-world situations that drivers experience and were staged in front of a live audience.

Initially, the audience was engaged via offline mailers, but that was only the beginning. At the heart of the programme was the ‘SkidSteerSmackdown.com’ microsite, featuring videos of digger battles. The site was fully interactive, enabling visitors to engage in a number of ways. For example, fans could create e-postcards which could be customized and distributed to friends and co-workers. This simple tool converted dealers and operators into the campaign’s strongest advocates. A series of eDMs were distributed to alert both dealer and prospects when new content was available on the site, and finally – traditional elements such as print ads were also incorporated.

And through this activity, John Deere gained a cult following. Since the site launch in April 2008, the microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and more than 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Offline, the Smackdown-themed lead generators yielded a 4 percent response rate, outpacing many other similar mailers during the year. Drive-to-site banner advertising had click-through-rates of approximately 3 percent, and eBlasts promoting the site had response rates of more than 7 percent.

This was a campaign that had direct marketing at the heart – there was an identifiable audience, a clear proposition and a measurable response. But to encapsulate it in this way does no justice to the true reach of the activity. We could have sent out the mailers and waited to track the sales. But we didn’t. We took the brand to a new marketplace and created a following populated by genuine advocates. We drove awareness, created buzz and instigated WOM. And if I’m starting to sound like a traditional adman, then I make no apologies.

And neither should DM as a discipline. It is perfectly poised to tell complete brand stories through this brave new media landscape. But if DM professionals hide behind data and measurement without talking about the inspiring creative, groundbreaking online innovation and power to build genuine brand experiences, then they will be selling themselves short. They will be moaning about their Ferrari clutch, whilst never looking beyond to the potential of their own product. Go forth and sell it all, sell it now. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about

By Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer
GyroHSR

Links: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/944635/PROMOTIONAL-FEATURE—Direct-marketing-round-table/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH/

When times get tough one of the areas that often suffers is marketing. This is almost entirely driven by the thought that marketing is a ‘cost’ and as such can be pruned or even deleted in tough times. With the rise of digital media we have never been in a stronger position to truly measure the value in what marketeers get back for their marketing investment.

Which leads me nicely to my subject of this particular entry – effective marketing advertising that really pays off.

Recently I attended, as one of the judges, the 100 Watt Advertising effectiveness awards in Stockholm, Sweden.

The award is sponsored by the Swedish Advertising Association and Dagens Industri – the Swedish equivalent of the Financial Times. During September and October we sifted through the best of Swedish advertising for 2008. The work we were reviewing was to be judged firstly upon the works effectiveness at achieving the clients business targets and secondly at the ‘creativity’ employed to do this. It was very revealing to be a judge of such an event – and convinced me even more so that advertising and marketing first and foremost should deliver a greater payback than the cost. If your agency isn’t comfortable with that concept fire them.

So, don’t give up investing in marketing or advertising – just demand a decent return for it.

The winners details for the 100 Watt Awards can be found on the site listed below.

http://www.annons.se

Julian Stubbs

Head of Brand Consultancy, Gyro International

So what do we mean when we say positioning?  Whether we actively think about it or not, positioning is something that influences our everyday decisions about all sorts of issues. From simply buying lunch or considering something more substantial like which make of computer to buy, we are constantly being influenced by positioning to help us make our choices. Highest quality products vs. good-enough quality, reliable vs. cutting edge innovation, cheaper vs. more expensive, bigger vs. smaller – we are constantly putting things in ‘mental boxes’. It’s all about how we position things in our mind – that’s positioning.

The same applies to how we all view and position corporations. If we consider Microsoft or Apple, Volvo or Volkswagen, or even GE or Siemens people instantly have pretty clear mental pictures of what those corporate brands represent. So how do great brands attain distinct and strong positions?

Today we are all deluged with media. Although the number is somewhat debated, we are all impacted by around 500 brand impressions everyday via TV, radio, posters, magazines, newspapers, word of mouth and increasingly the internet. We are surrounded by brands competing for our attention. To help build clear brand positions in all the media noise, great brands keep their positioning simple, clear and consistent.

As one example look at BMW and how they have kept a clear position and consistent focus over the last 30 years built around ‘the ultimate driving machine’. They even boil that tag line down to just one word – driving. What they are really saying is if you want a true driver’s car, then you have to put BMW on the consideration list. The tag line is there to prove why the brand is relevant to the consumer’s life.

On a corporate, level look at the new positioning of Phillips, the Dutch multinational, Sense and Sensibility. On their corporate website Phillips claim they are… ‘convinced that no matter how complex and advanced an application or solution is, it should be simple to use and make sense’. Phillips is using this to bring their activities into a clear focus.

So positioning can play a crucial role in shaping how the world views a company and its activities.

Personally I am not sure either route is preferable. For one I don’t have any hatches and for two I can’t help thinking that the ‘spend now, pay it back later’ approach was the thing that got us into this pickle in the first place? Anyway, clearly I am no economist so I will bring the question back to a marketing theme and ask: What should brands do in a downturn? It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are reigning in spend, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.

But how should brands behave during such times? What messages should they take to consumers? Well hopefully Xtreme will have part of the answer. A recent email informed me that they have put together a report that ‘explores and analyses recessionary marketing communications tactics and strategies from around the world’. I thought this seemed like a nice idea so we have ordered a copy. In addition to generating them a sale, the Xtreme email did another job.

It prompted me to recall a rather jarring brand experience I had had courtesy of Orange a day or so earlier. I had flicked through 5 or 6 pages of press doom and gloom – Mumbai, house prices, the pound against the dollar, more failing retailers and another round of job cuts – when I logged onto Orange broadband at home. The message on the home page read “How bad will it get?” with the usual ‘expert’ telling me it could undoubtedly get worse. Now I am not sure I want to see Orange jump on the back of the credit crunch band wagon. I expect it of Tesco. I expect it of Asda.

But I want Orange to tell me it’s all going to be OK. That things are rosier than we might think. That the future is bright for gawd’s sake! So what does my own reaction tell me? It tells me that marketers and agencies need to think twice when the idea of a credit crunch campaign falls hits the flip-chart. Credit crunch busting offers and promotions might drive penetration in the near term but we must question what the effect will be on the brand in the long term.

Brands are precious. They are for life not just the credit crunch. Be careful out there.