For a while at Base One we’ve been questioning the logic of the single big idea as the basis of a brand’s campaigns. Having spent years creating consistent and compelling campaigns around a single idea, why change? It’s been proven to work and buyers are still buyers surely?

Well yes, and no. The fact is that Buyers are changing as this extract from a post by Chris Tacy, Chief Innovation Officer at Brand Experience Agency, Method implies:

 … now we have an entire new demographic who have grown up not having to take it. And as a result, the control relationship between brands and consumers has changed. And it's not going back. Technology has helped - but behavior is a big part of this. And at then end of the day... the chickens are coming home to roost.

In this new world... The Big Idea doesn't really hold water. Without the control relationship on the side of the brands, it's not even justifiable. [http://method.com/#/thoughts/ideasculture/detail/WpPost/17/]

It’s this change of relationship that is making us rethink. Brand owners have to realise that they will no longer have control of what people think or say about them. We can influence what they say and think but not control it. And our buyers fit many Persona we know that and for each of them the brand can mean different things. Therefore, we need to start developing clusters of brand ideas that can be relevant to different groups, and yet all relevant to the brand.

Strong brands in the future (even B2B brands) need to resonate as part of the sub-cultures that exist within our markets. Sub-cultures are different yet they overlap, so too must the ideas we place at the centre of our brands.

Given the alarming rate at which B2B data decays, how do you find the right data cleansing or data hygiene solution for your needs, from the many different options available?

Regular readers will have already noted my admiration for all things Apple, but also my dismay that its recent marketing has sought to distance itself from its B2B heritage. This was illustrated in its campaign using comics Mitchell & Webb, suggesting the PC is for work, and the Mac is for home – ironic given that it was the design and publishing industries that kept Apple alive in the 1990s. I can’t blame Apple for moving with the times, but it seemed rather disingenuous to abandon its heritage and – more importantly – its core market in such a fickle fashion.
So naturally my heart was warmed by the news that Apple has had a road to Damascus-style change of heart, and is refocusing on the corporate sector for its iPhone product. The logic would seem to be simple: to take on BlackBerry, which is rapidly developing a stranglehold on the business mobile telephony market, where both usage and functional requirements are growing rapidly, making it highly lucrative.
Ironically, Apple’s bid to re-engage with corporate users comes at precisely the same time as a change in direction by rival Blackberry – targeting the consumer sector, and positioning it as a lifestyle tool rather than business accessory. As discussed in our news analysis article, in effect each one is moving into the other’s territory, and creating potentially bitter rivals from two brands which until recently would seem to have little overlap.
This potentially sets up a fascinating conflict between two of the leading lights of the technology industry. What both must consider, however, is that they don’t neglect their existing brand strengths and loyal audiences in the pursuit of new ones. Particularly in the current climate, woe betide brands that fail to keep existing clients happy whilst heading off into new territory.

I stumbled out of bed, went downstairs and staggered through the Saturday morning ritual of forcing as much finely ground coffee into the espresso maker as is physically possible, to achieve the necessary caffeine hit to deal with the kids’ inexplicable enthusiasm for early morning daylight – which had been audible for several hours earlier.

The next stage, prior to Saturday’s light fluffy pancakes – griddle baked to a golden brown, lovingly stroked with lightly salted butter and smothered with lashings of Canadian maple syrup – was to open the post whilst waiting for the caffeine to make sense of the weekend. So as I sat in the kitchen wearing little more than my nightie and curlers, I was more than a little put out to open a mailer from a publishing house announcing that as a director of Birddog I had been identified as one of the UK’s most successful businessmen and that my profile had been ‘chosen’ to be listed in the said publisher’s directory of most-brilliant-awesome-people 2008.

The mailer told me, at some considerable length, how well wicked I was, how well wicked they were as publishers and what a complete privilege it was for me to be selected for inclusion into this few, this happy few, this band of brothers. I was to be honoured. I was to receive the attention I so rightly deserved. I was to be applauded for my unsurpassed business acumen – and could I please just visit their website and complete further details about how truly magnificent I absolutely am.

I immediately fired up my laptop (not my favourite Saturday morning pre-caffeine activity), located the publisher’s website and searched for the ‘shove it’ button. Duly located, I told them where to go and hope never to be distracted from my pancakes and Canadian maple syrup again.

I’ve never been a big fan of sending business communications into the home – but nor have I realised how vehemently opposed to it I quite clearly am. I’m aware that company directors’ home addresses are readily available from Companies House and I have regular discussions with clients seeking to reach a senior executive audience about whether or not they should use a home address database. I always advise ‘not’ – and now I know why. I can’t actually recall another such mailing that I’ve received at home – either because it hasn’t happened before, or just because I’ve simply refused to engage with it and put it straight in the bin. But this one was different.

I regret to admit that the difference was that I nearly fell for it. Flattery, ego-massage, self-gratification… all of those things are powerful response-generators. I like to think I have a healthy and well-formed opinion of my own ego so I should have loved this. And here’s the thing. If I’d received this mailer at work, I probably would have loved it. The publisher would have been able to build a rather astonishing database of directorial detail that I would otherwise be unlikely to tell my own pedicurist. Instead, they got nothing.

It may well be that the publisher was genuinely just seeking to publish a directory of the great and the good of British business and I’ve just scored an accomplished own-goal. But it didn’t feel right. It felt like an invasion of privacy that, if left unattended, would lead from the database to a mountain of other unsolicited business communications in the home.

There’s work – and there’s the weekend. They’re related, no doubt. But nothing should ever get in the way of screaming kids and Canadian maple syrup.

Spielberg’s been caught out for once. For the latest Indy adventure, he used the latest CGI technology. Unfortunately his audience hated it, preferring the old days when stunts were performed by real spiders. Sometimes, though, there’s no option but to keep up with the times. Take email, for example. It’s amazing to think it’s now 37 years since the first true email was sent by Ray Tomlinson.

Even more amazingly, it took another seven years for a Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) marketing rep to create the first spam. History doesn’t record the response rates, but boy, were people angry. Not only because ARPANET (the world’s first Intranet system developed by the United States Department of Defence) had been hijacked for marketing, but because the first 324 lines they waded through were nothing but addresses.

Hopefully, the latest technology lets us be a lot smarter and more profitable, especially when we’re pushing products that sell off the virtual page.

Triggers are one of the ways we’re getting cleverer in sending emails – when the system recognises when an item is purchased and automatically emails the customer with a special offer on a related product.

More controversial are smart ads. Whereas Yahoo and others work out what banners are relevant based on your site searches, smart ads (allegedly) read emails and put up ads triggered by key words they contain.

Here’s a thought. Maybe we don’t just have to rely on the latest technology. Web design guru Jakob Neilson has studied the way in which we scan web pages (it’s in an F shape, apparently) and it’s well worth considering whether we can apply his findings to give emails more impact.

And here’s a tip – don’t start with 324 address lines.  

What are the best sources of data for marketing outside the UK? What factors should be considered when purchasing this kind of data?

 

When I started Concep 5 years ago we decided to target Marketing Directors within B2B, if we ever heard the words “IT Director” it would send shivers down our spines and a common question to us would be: “Can we avoid IT?”.

 

Is this still the case?

 

Like Marketing Directors, historically IT Directors and CIOs were not strategic roles within the corporate structure and neither were involved in developing the organizations business strategy.  However, it does seem that this is where both their roles are heading as they strive for their seats on the board.

 

One of the most insightful comments from a fortune 100 CIO I met recently was his encouragement to colleagues “not to fall in love with the technology”. He was talking about individuals who fought any new ideas because they had signed off on technology, which had now become outdated and no longer delivered the functionality that the business needed. Consequently, there is a fear of a black mark against someone’s name and rather than look at new technologies, they fight for reasons to keep the current solutions in place. More often than not this scenario exists where something was developed internally so the emotional tie-in is even stronger.

 

The IT Directors role is admittedly being made more difficult by the masses of legislations which are being forced on organisations and IT are being seen as the guardians, or dare I say, watch dogs, to ensure this legislation is being implemented in an automated way. This, however, needs to be balanced with how marketing want to deliver their business goals.

 

Personally and from experience, when Marketing and IT are collaborating at the beginning of a project, projects tend to run smoother and get implemented quicker.  When IT and Marketing don’t get along we continue to see projects being snuck through the back door and/or delays on critical marketing opportunities.

So there I was attempting to enjoy a cappuccinolattemoccacoffee at the Landmark in Marylebone. I say ‘attempting’ because the ordering process was a little arduous and left me somewhat flustered. The Landmark is a great venue for off-site casual business meetings and the breakfast and mezzanine areas were being used extensively for exactly that purpose when I arrived to meet clients. The waitress arrived promptly and I asked for coffee. Not unreasonable, surely? I’m in business. I’m having a business meeting with other business people to talk about business things in a businesslike manner so I’d like some business coffee. Please. Well, no. There followed an elaborate and extensive coffee selection process that left me confused and feeling a bit like an arse in front of clients who were smiling smugly as they had clearly just been through the same ordeal prior to my arrival. I explained that I didn’t speak Starbucks and could I please just have some coffee?

 

I can’t even begin to describe the horror of the cappuccinolattemoccacoffee that arrived just as I was launching into the crux of the meeting subject. I like to think I’m in touch with my feminine side in a sensitive caring way, but this coffee was gay. No offence intended – but there’s no other adequate word. It was presented in a fluted pilsner-type glass with a wire frame and impossible to hold handle. The whole world could see the two-thirds milky coffee topped with one-third whippofroth and sprinkled with chocolate hundreds and thousands. If they’d stuck a bleedin’ parasol in it I’d have stood up and left. Coffee – in a glass. With sprinkles.

 

I scanned the room in alarm to see who might be watching and realised that there was a room full of business people all struggling to come to terms with the same refreshment dilemma – drink it and look like a twat, or pretend it isn’t yours.

 

The Landmark was trying to be different. It succeeded. But perhaps it had lost sight of the needs of its business audience. Differentiation can be good – but context is everything. Learning when to step over the line and how far are salutary lessons. He said as he lifted his glass, stuck out his little pinkie and wiped the chocolate froth from his chin. 

A fine addition to the list of great British Ideas that didn’t quite work on day one, which currently includes the Millennium Bridge, the River of Fire and the Princess Diana fountain. Not to mention Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower, which opened five years late and promptly celebrated by trapping the project manager 100 feet up for an hour.

 

Back in 2007, a press release stated that the ‘highly sophisticated T5 baggage system had been designed for performance and reliability… there would be minimal queuing at every stage’. Which turned out to be quite an overclaim.

 

B2C, of course, is rife with promises that aren’t lived up to. Take the case of a March ASA adjudication; a shopping channel overstated product details, pricing and technical facts (pretty much a full house of errors, I’d have thought).

 

B2B, however, is relatively clean, as a quick check back through the annals of the ASA shows. The only semi-B2B ad in the annual top ten complaints since 1994 was a mono printer whose features included a nude woman.

 

But clean though we are, we’re going to have to be even more careful in future. The new Business Protection from Misleading Marketing and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading regulations may be little more than a consolidation of existing law, but they’ll have an impact on what we can and can’t say about our products and services. No more ‘offer applies while stocks last’ if the product’s unlimited. No more product descriptions which include things we legally have to offer. Maybe even no more advertorials.

 

In short, from now on, the onus will be on us to be spot on. Hard facts, not weasel words are now the order of the day. And unlike Heathrow, no more flights of fancy.

BBC TV’s The Apprentice is a rare thing – an example of broadcasting that not only entertains, but also educates and promotes the world of business to the wider UK population. Not only that, but it does so very, very well – it’s hugely popular across all demographics. It has what in the music industry they call ‘cross-over appeal’.

For example, I recently had a long conversation about it with my girlfriend’s sister, who is a big fan, but as a university undergraduate has a lifestyle and interests that are very different to mine. The Apprentice, however, is something we could both relate to, and discuss and dissect with impassioned glee.

So it’s all brilliant and a televisual masterpiece? Well, almost, but not quite. I have a bit of a problem with The Apprentice: it’s the ultimate triumph of sales over marketing.

To a greater or lesser extent, all the contestants are sales people and the majority of tasks succeed or fail on a sales pitch – either to businesses, or to selected individuals. The planning, analysis, insight and strategy are at best rushed and ill-considered; at worst absent altogether. And of course, there is absolutely no time for relationship building, which is critical in B2B. Marketing is simply not on the agenda.

I suspect this is because it is generally salespeople who have sufficient bravado to enter as contestants, therefore the show is naturally biased towards them. But The Apprentice is effectively airbrushing marketing out of the picture of business that it presents, a picture that is all-too influential. This is bad for both marketing, and for business generally.

So well done BBC for creating something so compelling, but as with any good soap opera, the reality is a little more complex.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying ‘stick to Eastenders’ but in the name of public service broadcasting perhaps the corporation could be asked to produce something which redresses the balance.