Marketers have a critical role in finding the future

Collapses in the retail sector dominate the news today.  More gloom and doom to come, they speculate.  Let's not wallow in depression yet.

The three big names on reporters' lips today are all victims of the digital revolution.  HMV and Blockbuster lost their market to online distribution.  Jessops, they say, to photography merging with smart phones.  For every loser, however, there's a winner. (Can you say Amazon?)

These collapses weren't just bad luck.  In each case, the company failed to spot the changing market and do something about it.  What if HMV had been first with something like iTunes?  Why didn't Blockbuster think of LoveFilm?  Jessops is a trickier case, but certainly putting more emphasis on storage, printing and sharing of all those smart phone shots could have extended their lifespan.

These are strategy decisions for top management, but marketing plays a role.  How can we contribute to keeping our companies ahead of the evolutionary curve?

ONE:  Watch the trends.  Research is the less sexy, but absolutely critical side of marketing.  Pay attention to how the world is changing and extrapolate how it may rock your piece of it.  Advise management on how they can get ahead of the curve.

TWO:  Talk to a teenager.  Complement that formal research by using the hip, trendy ones.  Technology is driving our world, and they're driving technology. Get into their heads.

THREE:  Think outside the box.  Marketing is often the refuge of the creative in otherwise conservative corporations.  Use that.  Get crazy.  Brainstorm.  Consider wild and wonderful market extentions.  Most of the ideas will be impractical but one or two might be great. 

Your creativity could save your company.  Use it.

To be opportunistic, be prepared

Snowed in today.  Thanks to a full complement of communications technology, it doesn't really matter. Work continues as normal.

But the weather-generated shut down is big news, and a big opportunity for marketers.  The PR types have grasped this for ages.  You can be fairly sure that certain incidents are going to happen with occasional regularity.  Weather gridlock.  Lost children.  Some idiot leaving sensitive information on a train.  So you prepare your campaign materials, linked to what you have to promote, and wait for the inevitable to happen.  Then you jump all over it.

You'd think traditional marketing types would follow this model, but there's little evidence of it.  Both my personal and work email boxes are receiving the same levels of traffic as ever from incoming direct mail today, but almost nobody is using a timely angle.

Only three companies grabbed the opportunity.  Lucky, that.  I get to mention them all.

ONE:  The Garden Centre.  First out of the gate, as the forecasts told us to prep for the worst.  Remember those poor birds who won't be able to get to their food supply, and drop by for some bird seed.  Opportunistic, practical and tugged at the heart strings.  Good stuff. (But no, I didn't buy.)

TWO:  HSBC.  The bank took the chance to promote the depth of services available through online banking.  Even if I already bank online, had I discovered them all?  Experience the convenience of banking from your armchair and thank heavens you don't have to battle up to a branch any more.

THREE:  Weight Watchers.  A surprise.  I wouldn't have thought there was a natural angle for them.  But here it was.  The weather is frightful, you probably don't want to go outside.  But exercise is important.  So here are ideas for stuff you can do in your sitting room.  A creative stretch that shows almost anyone can link to almost anything if you think hard enough.

The big surprise?  No grocery stores.  I'm on the email lists for Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's, and not one promoted their home delivery services.  I can't imagine a better opportunity, as we're all locked down making due with what happens to be in our fridges.  And yet, all three missed the boat.  Better luck next storm.

Learning from the Australians (and savouring some fine wine)

The recycling team finally turned up this week for the post-holiday glass pickup.  While the drinking may have been intoxicating, the empties were sobering, both in quantity and quality.  Health would benefit from drinking less, finances from less splurging on top quality stuff.

Amongst those excellent bottles was at least one Australian.  Just twenty years ago, the idea of wines from down under keeping level company with Mersault and Bordeaux was unimaginable.  What happened?  In part, some great marketing.

Examples worth remembering.

ONE.  Use clear language.  Before the Australians, traditional wines had demanded knowledge.  Labels told of the maker and the region, but not the grape variety.  It was up to you to educate yourself to what was grown where, and what it might taste like.  The Australians were the first to start using grape varieties, cutting across all those confusing nuances of terroir.  A a chardonnay or a merlot tasted a certain way, and led to shopper certainty.  Not for the connoisseur, of course, but it sure opened up the lower (and much bigger) end of the market.

TWO.  Remember the whole chain of influence.  There's a famous story about a trip for London-based wine writers, hosted by the Australian wine marketing board.  This was a make-or-break moment; these writers were immensely powerful.  On the day the writers (all men, it was the '80s) landed in Sydney, the board had bottles delivered to their wives.  "This is what your husband will be drinking this week.  We hope you'll enjoy it, too."  Evidently, the writers came under unusual pressure when they came home to give favourable reviews.  Brilliant.  All too often we forget that people are influenced outside the office as much, if not more than, inside.  The Australians used that beautifully.

THREE.  Have a good product.  Throughout the '90s, the French reaction to surging Australian sales was "it's just marketing".  And yes, that helped.  But it would have been a short boom without a great product.  Marketing got people to try.  Taste got them to stay.  Marketing and product need each other, just like those grapes need yeast to become wine.

And that wine?  It was Gemtree Uncut Shiraz 2007.  Good luck finding any.  I bought it direct from the charming winemaker, who swore with passion that it was his best vintage ever and would be exquisite if laid down for five years.  I gave in to the marketing.  And the product paid off.

Tips for sanity checking campaigns

Stopping off for a coffee between meetings in London today, I noticed the pictured tent card on my table.  I could win coffee for a month ... OR a free iPad.

My immediate thought:  A month's worth of something as inconsequential as coffee adds up to an expensive item like an iPad?  Jeez, this is expensive.  Must buy less.

Probably not what the marketer behind the campaign had in mind.  Perhaps my reaction was a renegade, pedantic one-off.  But it did bring to mind some rules of sanity checking before launching a campaign.

ONE:  Ask your mum.  Or your kid, or anyone else who has nothing to do with what you're promoting.  We all tend to get blinkered by our own little worlds.  It's amazing how some distance can reveal the blindingly obvious.

TWO:  Think like your enemy.  Put yourself in the shoes of the person selling against you, and then poke every hole you can think of into your argument.  Find your weaknesses.  Because, believe me, they will.

THREE:  Keep it simple.  Had they offered me free coffee for a month, I might have found that a fine offer.  A chance to win an iPad?  Cool.  (Although I, like seemingly everyone else in that particular Costa, already had one.)  But offering me both invited confusion.

No more coffee "out" for me this month.  Maybe I can save up enough for an iPhone 4.

Rule of threes drives new marcomms blog

One of my best bosses ever believed fervently that the human brain was programmed to instinctively process in threes.  Think about it.

Reading, writing, 'rithmetic.  Red, white and blue. Bacon, lettuce and tomato.  Father, son, Holy Ghost.  He had a point.  He based his whole management style on it.  I'm just pinching it for a blog.

I've been thinking I needed to start blogging professionally for a while.  Specifically, since I met Sharif Khalladi, author of The Social Executive, at an event last summer.  His starting point, which I've long agreed with, is that transformational leaders are great communicators.  It follows that in this connected age, those leaders must embrace social media.  For executives in marketing or communications, that need is much greater.  Those who don't will soon be left in the last century.

I'm not new to blogging, of course.  I was a social media early adopter and my blog on the latter half of the work/life balance reaches its sixth anniversary in May.  If you're more interested in fine dining, opera, museums and travel, check out Ferrara's View.  But if marketing communications, PR and internal communications loom large in your world, you might want to check back here.

What will you find?

ONE.  Observation.  I'm a trained observer, of course, thanks to that fine journalistic education at Northwestern University.  The corporate world throws up a lot of quirky stories.

TWO.  Education.  I shudder to admit it, but I've passed the 25-year mark in the corporate world.  I've seen a lot, made plenty of mistakes, managed to do some things very well.  I'll pass on the benefits of my experience.  Use it as you will.

THREE.  Entertainment.  We spend the majority of our waking lives at work.  It should be fun.  You won't find weight, lofty or erudite here.  I promise to keep it quick, relevant and entertaining.

So that's the promise.  Three observations relating to the world of corporate communications in every entry, written to amuse you whilst, hopefully, giving you some insight to help you do your job better.  I hope you'll be back.