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.

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.  

 

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.

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.

Can it be true what the title beholds? Do sales people really know more than marketers about marketing? Well, obviously I don’t think so, but I met a couple of regional sales reps yesterday, on the Piccadilly Line, that truly did.

 

I guess the most frightening admission was that I approached two strangers on the tube and started talking to them. Yes, I must have looked like a lunatic. I felt like one.

 

In short, I was on the Piccadilly Line, late morning, on my way to a client meeting. During one unscheduled stop [in a tunnel], I overheard two people having a good stab at their [IT] marketing department, with lines like “I have no idea what they [marketing department] are doing down there with their glossy leaflets”, “They are a waste of resources”, “they just need to do some TV advertising” and “They have the cheek to send direct mail to my clients”… and so on. They were on a roll.

 

I do not think of myself as the ‘marketer’s freedom fighter’, but their blatant disregard for marketing got me going. Hence, I spoke out. This is the bit where I felt like a lunatic. However, I kept it quick and tried to make light of my impromptu comments.

 

I told them who I was [naturally they were unimpressed] and asked them why they thought their marketing department was so bad. There was a load of hyperbole based on pure prejudice towards marketing. So much so, as I quickly found out that they had never met a marketer in their company. They also had no real idea what the marketing department’s plans were. Hence, their own marketing ideas must have felt like pure original-thinking genius. It was then the tube door opened; I got off, and ran.

 

Not much of a story really. However, it truly got me thinking about the conundrum. Marketing should be an essential and must be executed to the benefit of all business; but they, the salesmen, had a point. Not as if they knew what it was, but a point none-the-less:

 

With so much time and energy spent on client facing marketing strategies, some marketers score an own goal. They forget to market themselves internally and forget to inform and engage with the rest of the business. No wonder sales people think that marketers are rubbish if they never meet them and cannot see or feel the benefits of the marketing effort.

 

So much has moved forward in the world of B2B marketing, yet some departments stay clear of engaging directly with the sales department. It could be because there is no encouragement, or that there is no perceived need, or that they have tried and have received a tepid response. Either way, engagement with the wider business, and especially sales, is essential.

 

So what can we take from this? (a) It is still best not to talk to strangers on the tube and (b) that the irony is still alive, where some marketers, so adept at promoting their business, are terrible at promoting themselves!

Recently I had a sales person calling me non-stop, leaving messages everywhere, and all I could think was - I’m too busy to get back to him and wish he wouldn’t waste my time with all these messages, then I left another voicemail for someone I was chasing up.

So my Eureka moment came. In the last two weeks I have been calling people back just to let them know I am not looking at X service and am very happy with my current suppliers.

The result – I don’t have ten email messages and lots of voicemails waiting for me every time I come out of a meeting, and people in my team haven’t left dozens of post-it notes on my screen for someone who has called me five times. This makes me hope and believe that this person is no longer chasing me and can now concentrate on a real and valid prospect.

I have spoken with a few people about this latest phenomenon, there seems to be a consensus that there has been a drop in manners over recent years. When we talk about B2B being about developing and maintaining relationships, it seems we have forgotten how to interact with our fellow man and that technology is leading to these faceless interactions and a degradation of manners across the board. I know we are all busy, but are we actually wasting more time by not calling someone back, even if it is to say, “I can’t look at it right now but let’s talk in six months”.

It has become far too easy to drop someone an email or send a text message and think right that’s the end of that. If someone has spent the time to write a ten-page proposal for us then do they not deserve at least some feedback and constructive comments?

One group of people who suffer more than most is the sales or business development teams. I think we all need to start offering them a little bit more courtesy and respect because they are people too (including recruitment consultants).

I have also noticed this trend for my Relationship Management team. Many of them have been called out to help on an urgent project and invested time on finding a solution and pulling together a team and then, nothing, radio silence, maybe for several weeks. The reasons for the project going on hold are valid, i.e. another project has taken priority, budgets cut etc., but the silence does nothing to develop a proactive can do attitude from your Account Manager, a simple call to on the current status would go a long way to maintaining a good working relationship. 

People are now dating on line because they don’t have time to meet people, I just hope we are not getting too busy using these online tools that were meant to make communications easier to actually listen and respond.

I've been feeling very good about B2B Marketing recently. Not the magazine, or the website (though they are both fantastic) but the genre. Until today that is. Rushing down the stairs to the tube at Waterloo station I was struck by a monstrosity of a poster ad for Brother printers. It felt like a throw back to the 1990s. Shame on you Brother, and your agency.

I know it's just an poster campaign and I should be recognising what is a great bit of media buying, but I'm willing to bet that I and perhaps a few other of you sensitive marketers are the only people that remember it and for that reason it's depressing. Not only is it a brand (or possibly a product range) ad focusing on a feature that is so generic (speed), but the execution is frankly insulting. A man hurdling a desk. A man hurdling a desk, of all things.

I thought we'd progressed beyond that. I thought we all recognised that we may select a product on it's features but we select a brand on much more subtle things. Things we don't necessarily consciously recognise but that are more powerful and more influencial than any product feature. Especially in such a mature market like office printers!

We have to do better, in fact most of are. The sophistication of planning observable across all B2B sectors is way above this, but just a few of you (and you know who you are) are letting the side down.

I recently sent my boyfriend to Tesco to buy some sugar. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. A bemused voice, verging on panic, said, “There’s 257 different types of sugar in front of me. Which one shall I buy, which one, which one?” Two hours later, he returned home with four different bags of sugar, all of varying shades, three of which are destined to go mouldy in my cupboard.

I feel pretty much the same about the amount of words that we are bombarded with. Every single day, columns and columns of news, features, information, advice, analysis, commentary, profiles and reviews are printed on reams and reams of paper. How do I know which ones to read, which ones to discard, and which ones to cut out and stick on my wall?

And that was before the Internet. Now, it’s a hopeless cause. Cyberspace is jam packed with words, and increasingly: videos, virals, podcasts, webinars, wikis and games - official, as well as unofficial - with bloggers (including myself) writing their own opinion on anything and everything to anyone that will listen.

So, how do you know where to look and who to trust – and where to express your own opinions? As the Internet matures and the information on it becomes increasingly unmanageable, it looks like niche communities will become its mainstay. In the world of B2B, where ‘niche’ is a key word, such communities are already springing up led by the likes of companies such as the Financial Times and Quark.

Hopefully, this will be the future of online. Once we’ve found our own niche, online worlds (and I’m sure each one of us will have a few for each area of our lives), we’ll find lots of the information we need in one place. So, if like me, you’re having trouble seeing the wood for the trees, don’t despair, your days of trawling the Internet for hours in a blind panic, or building a tower of newspapers to sift through at the weekend, may be numbered. Your own special community website will help to filter the information and give it to you straight – perhaps with a few opinions thrown in for good measure. I’m thinking of launching one called ‘Sugar for Starters’. It’s bound to take off.