We’ve talked a lot recently about the evolving nature of B2B direct communications, and how email may be gradually taking on the ‘junk mail’ tag from post. Whilst this is certainly still a moot point – particularly for the email service providers – perhaps we can use the issue of Christmas marketing messages to gain a glimpse of the future.

The reason Christmas is relevant for a communications comparison between many different companies is that everyone is talking, and everyone is saying pretty much the same thing: ie. “hello, thanks for your business this year, please stay in touch next year”. Admittedly some will really go to town with gifts etc., but for most, that’s basically it. Just like Christmas, this only happens once a year.

So what does this plethora of Christmas comms tell us? Well, for the first time this year, as far as my own inbound messages were concerned, emails dramatically outnumbered cards. Now I’m not going to pretend this is a scientific analysis, because A) I’ve not been keeping detailed statistical records and B) I’m a sample of one C) I’m a journalist, therefore not representative of typical business decision makers. Despite this, it is significant, because it suggests that the tide is turning away from post.

So what does this mean? “Post is dead – long live email!” I hear you cry. Well, not exactly. By the time you’ve opened your fortieth wacky Xmas email of the day, you couldn’t care less what the message was, or that they’ve given all the money they would have spent on post to charity, or that there was a viral game attached. But when the post arrived I did take time away from the computer to open it and to work out exactly who had taken time to sign their name in a card (sometimes lots of names) print a label, frank the envelope… etc. etc. You get the picture. The cards were special. The emails (most of them anyway) were clutter in my groaning inbox.

So is the shape of things to come for B2B communications? Only time will tell. The only thing we can be sure of is that as soon as one form of communications appears to be becoming commoditised, alternatives will become much more effective. And with Christmas communications at least, that’s exactly what is happening.

When we do Brand workshops with clients we often include an exercise designed to help them to identify the character they want their brand to portray and I think today I've spotted a trend. During the exercise participants are asked to choose two faces, one that represents how they feel the brand is seen now and the second, to represent what how they would like the brand to be seen. The actual faces are not that important its about the differences between the two faces. Invariably the changes in perception they wish for include:

• to be more open / accessible
• to be friendlier
• to be more interested / engaged
• to be less formal

If we stop to think about it this isn't surprising as it reflects changes in our society, but the real challenge comes in implementing the changes internally to make this character real, especially in a service business. It's relatively easy creating communications that portray the brand in this way, but changing the culture so that personal interactions feel in line with this character requires absolute commitment from the very top. Often the people at the top are older, more traditional and dare I say it, out of touch with what their customers really want.

We usually find that the "feeling" a business projects reflects the leader, especially when there is a strong leader. And so it should you could argue, but I believe there should be a separation between the personality of the leader and the personality of the business. This can only happen if it is designed to be so and implemented through a program of change. That's not as easy as it sounds.

 

 

I make it a point of not naming and shaming, or of moaning about companies who don’t want to play along with my agenda, but I’m going to break this rule for Eurostar. As you may have noted from recent blog posts and articles, I’ve been a massive admirer of Eurostar’s new channel tunnel rail link, its terminus at St Pancras and the opportunity this presents for it in marketing terms. Which is why I wanted to talk to them about it – indeed to sing their praises. So I approached them, asking for a ten minute telephone interview with one of their senior marketers to talk about their marketing, followed by half an hour of their time for a WebTV interview to discuss the development on camera. But they declined both. Actually, the didn’t decline, they just didn’t really bother coming back to me about the opportunity. The PR just let it drop.

Now I understand completely that B2B marketers (our primary readers) are not Eurostar’s primary audience, but almost certainly a large proportion will be business travellers, and that isn’t really the point. Surely the primary point of PR is to present your organisation in the best possible light to all possible audiences, not to be picky and shun certain ones arbitrarily. I made it clear to the press office that this was going to be a positive piece – perhaps if I’d said I was going to criticise them I might have gained more traction. Otherwise a polite “no thanks” or “we’re too busy this week” would have sufficed.

PR and PRs can be fickle at the best of times, but it’s Eurostar’s marketing people that I’m really surprises me. Why wouldn’t they want to tell the wider marketing world about what a good job they’ve been doing? Perhaps they think this would be bragging, but from my perspective it just smacks of laziness and/or arrogance. So congratulations Eurostar – you’ve turned a fan into a critic. It’s the ultimate PR own goal, and surely there’s a lesson in this. As our friends at the Eurovision Song Contest would have said, with a suitably French accent: “Eurostar: nil points.”

The latent train-spotter in me has been well and truly seduced by the hype surrounding the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras. But whilst I’m bowled over by the images of sleek super-fast trains beneath the magnificent neo-gothic wrought iron roof, I’m really looking forward to how Eurostar leverages all the good-will and enthusiasm to target business travellers.

I’m genuinely thrilled that St Pancras has been given a new lease of life – its façade used to fascinate me as a child, more like something out of a Germanic gothic fantasy than a train station, sitting out-of-place and semi-derelict amidst the traffic fumes on the Euston Road. Years later I spent what felt like many hours there, in the gloom, waiting for trains to take me back to my student residence in Nottingham.
Now, after so many years in the wilderness it’s been brought back to life and takes up a new role as key transport hub integrating the UK with the continent.

Although it’s been in planning for years, the timing is very opportune. Not only have environmental issues now firmly established themselves as boardroom agendas – and therefore key considerations in travel planning – but the encroachment of the budget airlines and the rises in tax have stripped out the last vestiges of the romance of air travel (for short-haul flights at least).

Eurostar has a fantastic opportunity to present its new Paris and Brussels services as the sophisticated, convenient (at least, for travellers to and from London) and environmentally aware alternative to airlines for business travellers. Like SilverJet (the recently established business-class only airline to the US) the travelling experience is designed to appeal to a mix of business executives and high net worth individuals. In St Pancras’s case, this includes prestige, state-of-the-art (whatever that means) shopping and the world’s longest champagne bar. Glamour is high up the agenda.

To date, however, there’s not been much evidence of a specific B2B push for post St Pancras Eurostar. However, with the general level of hype this is unsurprising, and once this dies down some targeting communications surely can’t be far off. Given the strength of the proposition and the argument we must expect the message to be pretty compelling. As B2B Marketing’s review of 60 years of business advertising demonstrates, the airlines have traditionally taken the higher moral ground when it comes to business travel, and in terms of marketing have held all the aces. The new style channel rail link, however, looks set to trump them all.