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February 26, 2009
Change You Can Make Money From.
The current market is filled with stories of companies savaged by the financial industry meltdown and subsequent recession. Today's announcement from IBM that it expects to hit its 2009 earnings targets after already posting a better than expected 4Q08 is more evidence that what is at work here is "not your father's recession."
Undoubtedly the exuberent overspending of the past decade has helped to fuel a fall from grace in many areas of the economy. But some segments, like autos, are also experiencing a structural shift...such as the end of the Boomer era and reduced consumption for macroeconomic reasons.
With IBM, we are also seeing a profound shift toward services and outsourcing as companies look to focus on what they do best...and leave many complex infrastructure operations to outside experts. That shift will fuel many opportunities for companies large and small in the years ahead.
What does it all mean for marketers? First, in marketing, the same search for expertise will fuel new opportunities. Despite plummeting spending, there is work being done but, in some cases, it is not the traditional agency fare. Second, newfound competitiveness is fueling an immense need for loyalty marketing, social marketing, relationship management programs and spend optimization programs. These are new concepts, executed using new strategies and new technologies. That means new opportunities.
Savvy businesspeople are regrouping and religning their strategies to take advantage of the shifts that are under way. For marketers, there is not return to business-as-it-was before September 13, 2008. But, as IBM showed today, that may not be a totally bad thing.
Posted by jcioban at 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2009
Learning From Harvard
Complements of Guy Kawasaki's How To Change The World blog, comes an article about Harvard's recruitment process for incoming students. As a Dartmouth alum who has participated in alumni interviewing, I found the article of interest at the college level...but of great interest as a business marketer.
Brand management, targeting, multichannel marketing and nurturing are all at work. It is a great lesson in how a premium brand maintains its competitive edge in evovling markets. Harvard's prestige and success are predicated on continuously producing leaders who burnish the image and ensure a steady stream of donations that support the continuation of the cycle. The long-term strategy is maintained only by methodical exceution of a short-term tactical plan over the course of time.
Posted by jcioban at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 21, 2009
The Decline Of Reach
How do you communicate with your prospects and customers? That once-simple simple question has gotten increasingly complicated as traditional media lose their reach and relevance, as online tools like e-mail become more challenging due to Inbox overload, and as evolving economics put pressure on already strapped budgets.
One area that has become especially thorny for marketers is the concept of reach -- a traditional measure/metric that is rapidly losing its meaning for both pricing and marketing effectiveness. Relied on during the heyday of broadcast advertising, reach has less and less meaning in a world driven by search marketing and expanding social media. Consumers and business buyers are increasingly triggered by different cues and have less loyalty than ever to individual media properties. Even when media reach is broad, its alue can be questioned. As Steve Rubel wrote in a December 2008 AdAge article, How Digital Media Will Deliver Tangible Benefits, "After all, if a site claims that it reaches millions but they're all just drive-bys, do such figures truly matter?" Such is the impact of technology that let's consumers interact with media in richer ways and lets marketers monitor and leverage that degree of engagement.
All this is leading to a crumbling of traditional publishing and communications infrastructures...as reader/reach metrics have less meaning the value of ads declines. In turn this is forcing marketers to explore new ways to communicate with their customers or to reach new prospects. Failure to acknowledge the changes can kill marketing programs regardless of the quality of the creative or the apparent logic of the media plan.
Posted by jcioban at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2009
Print Optimization. A Silk Purse May Come From This Sow's Ear.
I have been in a several client meetings over the past weeks where the demand to rationalize print spending has been front-and-center. In every case, the result is still baby steps, but the reality of print optimization is taking hold.
Print optimization is one of those vague concepts that is typically short-shrifted in most marketing programs. It just never makes it to the top of the heap in priority. But now, the recession has created a prime motivator...everyone needs to cut spending and print seems like the place to start. But, the rationale to optimize print production costs should not be motivated solely by the need to reduce expenses. Taking that tack can lead to diminished marketing results...print remains a vital element in the world of marketing.
So what is the alternative? A more wholistic view of print spending that identifies opportunities to optimize programs based on:
- client migration to online media
- excess print quantities that result in waste due to content obsolescence
- untargeted direct mail spending
- or...a host of other valid considerations!
For some time, industry experts have noted that the peripheral costs associated with print production (design, distribution, warehousing, waste from obsolescence, etc.) outway the costs of printing by 6:1 or 7:1. Process REALLY matters. Plus, sourcing from the best resource on a national scale can reduce absolute print costs by targeting the job to the press. We are currently engaged in a project like this for a large retailer and the savings potential is enormous.
At the same time, a true print optimization program will evaluate places where production should shift from mass-marketing, one-size-fits-all processes to more personalized digital print techniques. Digital print has made enormous strides in price-competitiveness and is applicable to far more applications than most people presume.
The point? While the need to reduce costs in today's down market is undeniable, you should turn the need for savings into opportunity by focusing energy on how to "optimize" the integration of printed materials in your marketing mix rather than focusing exclusively on reducing/eliminating printed materials.
Posted by jcioban at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 2, 2009
What Happens When Every Ad Is Pretty Good (Or Pretty Bad)?
Ed McMahon (shaky hands and all) and MC Hammer hawking Cash4Gold. What has the Super Bowl sunken to?
I am not going to comment on Super Bowl ads specifically, but technically, this post is about the ads. For me, the last several years have seemed like an immense letdown, with few shining stars standing out in a sea of apparent mediocrity. However, in retrospect, I think that perhaps what really has happened is that all the ads are now "pretty good" by American football-watcher standards...and that means that everything seems pretty undistinguised.
Slapstick humor (Bud), weak value propositions (Cheetos), poorly executed concepts (Cars.com, Toyota), and just plain bad ideas (Teleflora) were certainly plentiful. Yet, so were some elegant executions (Pepsi Mean Troy or Coke Heist). But do I really think that any of this will truly help sell the products? (My answer is obvious.) And that is the point.
When the original Apple 1984 ad aired, it was a seminal execution...a high-tech marvel that positioned the brand without really talking about the product. Since then, lots of brands have tried that approach, but guess what...if everyone does weak positioning....all the messages get lost in the primordial ooze we call ad clutter. Next, breakthroughs like the Budweiser Frogs or Terry Tate Office Linebacker are getting harder and harder to produce. Brilliance apparently does not grow on trees. This year, Sobe tried to shine in 3D. Too bad most people didn't have 3D glasses at hand when the ad aired. Perhaps it is time to return to the clarity that Xerox demonstrated in its Brother Domenick spots from three decades ago, which is sort of what Hyundai tried. But, our ad-addled brains don't always reward staid execution with high recall marks. Maybe Alex Baldwin is right...our brains are being manipulated into dysfunctional mush.
Which leaves the possibility that the most successful ads were the ones never run. Fedex saved enough money to fuel its fleet for a few hours. PETA got hundreds of thousands of views for an ad banished from broadcast by NBC. And GM can take the money it saved and pour it into engineering products that buyers might really want.
OK, enough for now. I have to go mail in that old set of cufflinks of mine to get my $0.17 check...it will help me through the recession.
Posted by jcioban at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
