Fishing for global insight

Understanding your customers and brand perceptions in multiple countries is not a one size fits all project. Differences in cultures, infrastructure, communication channels and sheer geography mean that one methodology will often not work across different countries, as articulated well in this Marketing Week article by Steve Hemsley.

The difficulties and expense that these studies can represent is considerable and can cause conflict between offices.

So why not enlist the local team as the local experts they already are - and empower them to collect and collate the research for you? Working from central questions and a rigorous framework, just expressed differently in different regions (in consultation with a research expert), doing the hands-on research can only help local teams get closer to customers, more engaged in the results and implications.

Creative research methodologies involving imagery, stories and clear, repeatable metrics could create a wealth of layered multi-national customer insight, at lower cost and deeper engagement, for both your team and your customers. Who knows, maybe your sales manager, accountant or CEO might enjoy the venture into something different!

Your team will now know how to fish, and will be able to repeat to catch more tasty insights in the future.

You? Do you think this is possible, flawed or will work for your organisation?

Image credit

An ice rink for Christmas

Sometimes the most powerful form marketing is to capture the feeling of your brand and make it tangible for potential customers.

And that is exactly what Tiffany & Co. have done with their sponsorship of Somerset House Ice Skating in London, UK.

The experience is magical, laced with excitement and romance in the most elegant of ways.

Totally Tiffany & Co.

You? How can you capture the emotion of your brand and make it tangible for customers, what is the purest expression of that - could it be a picnic in the park, a monster truck show or a high-flying stunt?

Prolonging the love

Following on from my post about celebrating the depression I was inspired by reading a trend-spotting, or rather trend-capturing article on Care and Repair by Jane Fulton-Suri of IDEO.

It demonstrates examples of a return to traditional notions of quality, care of items and repair, rather than ongoing consumption. Great examples include lastyearsmodel.com and Model Shoe Renew in Berkeley, California.

From a customer perspective, how could you help them get satisfaction in this new way of thinking?

- Could you offer a service to re-model and re-style people's favourite garments, giving budding fashion designers an outlet and experience and customers a chance to participate in the design process?

- Why not offer car maintenance workshops, like home depot DIY classes - but for care maintenance. Everything from tuning to the sperfect polish. Could you make it a social occassion, have a girls only session or simply create a small chance for people to have fun while helping them care for their cars? Imagine how much more into their car (and potentially your brand) they will feel once they are more comfortable under the hood?
- Could you start an organisation that provided a warm, cosy and fun place for people to learn old-fashioned 'Home Economics'? Imagine a lively space that engages older people sharing their old-time skills and younger people coming in with their shared energy and walking away with their newly made scarves, darned clothers or steaming loaves of bread.

From a brand perspective, would your brand be the one that they would re-sole year after year?

Image credit: Sewingsewingmachines.net

Eleven ideas to celebrate the depression

Recently I read a statement delivered by the esteemed NY Times Economics Columnist, Paul Krugman to the ANA.

"History tells us that we should not count on any kind of recovery anytime soon," he said. "The economy is depressed because people don't want to spend."

It was reported as a pronouncement of ongoing doom and caution.

What if we keep it real and accept that people are just behaving the way they need to in order to look after themselves and their families. This is our customers adjusting as needed to live well in the future. Surely this is a good thing?

So, to celebrate our customers newly focusing on that which is important to them and responding in new and creative ways to the challenge, here are 11 ideas to help customers celebrate the depression:

1. Send your customers a surprise bonus - just because. An extra something, a discount, $10 off their bill, some ideas on how they can use your service more efficiently.
2. Use your power to help your customer. If you have large purchasing power, special relationships with suppliers or unique access to places and objects - how can you leverage this for your customers benefit?
3. Do less. Charge less. Ask your customers what they can do without to pay less.
4. Support customers' re-focused lives - what about supporting local volunteering organisations, holding a street-long open dinner party or supporting walking to school?
5. Facilitate re-training and re-employment activities - start / wrap in a re-training program at your business that supports people that may have had forcible employment changes. Help them help each other.
6. Promote the great new more financially conscious lifestyle people are living, publicly. I saw a great campaign with luscious luxe green styling with the message "saving is the new spending". How can you make your customers feel proud of their new conscious choices?
7. Spend less as an organisation. Tell people people about it and the fact that this means that you did not need to put up your charges to them.
8. Spark a 'tight-ass tuesday' dinner party idea for customers. Share recipes, images, theme ideas and social linkages to help them do it.
9. Sponsor a council to create local free events for your area.
10. Utilise your space. Is your foyer, meeting rooms or carpark unused at times - how could you share this with customers to help them achieve their goals more cost effectively?
11. Support people to get and stay engaged in their community, irrespective of their work status. A great example of this is the Innocent big knit.

All of these celebrate the reality of people being more conscious and financially responsible whilst supporting your goal of increasing awareness and loyalty.

I don't know about you...but I'm feeling ready to get out and celebrate right about now :)

You? How are you helping customers celebrate the depression. Or do you think this is unreasonably fluffy for cash-constrained marketing budgets to contemplate?

Image Credit: Life Magazine (via http://www.chrisperruna.com/category/misc/)

stop talking.

Recently there has been discussions, presentations and articles (check out the interesting link to the Age of Singularity from @RyanMacJones here) upon the notion of 'brand purpose'. Essentially, this is a re-badged blend of a good old fashioned brand vision and corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing.

My challenge: stop talking about it to your peers and do good things.

As a marketer we need to sell constantly, to our management, our sales team and our peers to get our ideas across and implemented. Taking the principle of brand purpose at it's base level - the whole point is to do good things. And do so in a way that sustainable for your business (i.e. delivers profitability).

So now that you have sold it in - stop talking, start doing.

You? What are some of the great brand purpose initiatives you are initiating?

Image credit: Zami.com

A short recipe for naming

Naming can be hard. Excrutiating. Or a no-brainer.

Here is a simple method that I follow to cook up some great names for new products and businesses.

Use physical or virtual pen and paper and ideally a bunch of people who have an understanding of your customers, who you are as a business are (i.e. your values, purpose, people) and a mix of perspectives. Then ask the following three questions to spark a basket-load of ideas:

1. What names would clearly tell people what benefit there is to them of using this product, or simply, what it does. Let's use a desktop cloud computing company as an example.

• What it does for people: freedom, functionality everywhere, always-on, device freedom, easy desktops, forget about it. i.e. Get started (note - web design)
• What it is: a no PC PC, a computer without the box, a PC in your pocket, a vitual PC, tech-agnostic, flexible personal computing. I.e. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

2. Who are we? And why are we special?

• Exceptional architects, experience management, Ex consultants, Dynamic consultants, Old fixers, Men with spanners, formidable, Bob's PCs, business technologists, deep computing thinkers.

3. What is a name that is completely unrelated to the product or service, but has the potential to have meaning loaded within it (i.e. become a real brand). It is different enough in the industry to have cut-through and strong enough to create visual cues.

• For example, Yellow, Orange, , alice euphemia, Zara, Lululemon

Method:

Brainstorm.

Check in with customers.

Decide.

Go.

You? What do you think of this method? What names do you love and why?

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Endless loops

Workshops, actions, engagement, meetings, calls, following up, managing up, managing down, minuting, maximising...hurrying.

I wonder, what would the corporate world be like without the endless loops of communication, planning, sharing responsibility and activity organising. And we just focused on the doing.

What would organisations be able to achieve if we weren't spending time in endless loops?

Would the world be a different place?

Sparking some ways we could do this. What if....?

- The entire organisation had a 5-to-do rule. No more than 5 major areas of focus.

- Daily tasks can only be listed on post its (inspiration: 99%)

- Everyone does what they say they will, first time.

- The organisation celebrates when people say no.

- Work only in small teams, with discrete focus and fast actions (inspiration: Thoughtworks).

- From an organisational perspective - making really clear goals, resource allocation and basis for achievement > lessens jockeying (and associated time wasting activities) and improves focus.

- Shorter time-frames for delivery (no more than 1 week)

- Entire org run in an agile manner (aka 37signals and Thoughtworks).

- Have customer voting each week on what the org should do > pinpoint accuracy for delivery to customer needs.

- Say it is OK to fail. People try new things, better ways and stop wasting time covering their tush.

- Cookie cutter communications - clearly outlined 'you should communicate this and then', so people share what needs to be shared, without waste.

- The opposite - total acceptance of different working styles but ruthless accountability for the work that needs to be done.

- Task lists / business priorities with voting buttons - decisions made fast.

- Simple (gasp) paper signs on everyones desk - this is what I do, this is what I don't, this is what I decide.

- All work is integrated into some form of project, with project 'bubbles' sharing and overlapping. (note, need to be cautious with notional business aka SM style distraction

- Could have a 'mute' button on all incoming information streams for when we need to focus.

What are things you do, or could do to stop endless loops in your organisation?

Me, I'm going start with clarifying responsibilities and the post-it to-do list.

image credit: adriapocera

Why little brands are sexy

Having a conversation with another brand geek made me wonder - what makes it so hot to work with big shot brands?

So, you get social recognition (oh, you work for them.....ooooh), bigger budgets (oh, you managed that squillion dollar campaign.....oooooh), recruiter recognition (oh, you tick that box....oooh).

But little brands are sexy. Evolving, passionate, meaningful and unlimited potential. Sexy.

It is a hard choice as a marketer to say no to the platinum blondes of brands. However it is with little brands that you have the scope to do truly great work, shaping the positioning in the market, inspiring the team and being forced and allowed by your size to do truly creative marketing.

Some great examples: Mast Brothers Chocolate, Pom wonderful, Craigslist, McIlhenny Tabasco, Bacon Salt, Little Creatures, Cullman Liquidation, Carmans, Hummingbird Bakery, Honest Tea, Trunki, Maldon Salt, Fisherman's Friend, Monocle, Dumbo Feather. Filled with attitude, in touch with their customers and with brands that outweigh their org structure.

As a marketer, the small brand is definitely sexy.

Nope, don't care what its called.

And why should I? If it doesn't tell me what it does for me, what does it matter if it is called Loft, Links or Lollipops. Case in point: McDonalds. I know exactly what it does for me, not because of the name, but because of the brand.

Unless the name does something for me as a customer - I don't care.

Customers care what you do for them. If we delay until we find perfection in a name, its not focusing on the brand. Focusing on what really matters for customers and delivering that is real branding. Don't wait, do.

Urban observation: Unlaced...

Cool people don't do laces. If they do it is with a reluctant, just kicked on air. From Cons to this season's latest sharp lace up high heeled, fur lined and spike heeled ankle boot, it just doesn't do to be too tightly laced.

There are designer and even bespoke unlaced shoes, songs, forums, books (Ok - not sure this one is at all cool) radio programs, a facebook page and many fashion and footwear pages dedicated to the unlaced. There is even a how to...to not do your laces.

There are obvious parallels. But I wonder...at what point did it become uncool to be laced, or even, in control? Was it the translation of the prisoner shoe to the outside world, Run DMC in the 80s with their Adi's or did it begin with the rebellion against the corset?

Unlaced, a small detail, but a perfect signal that members of the 'unlaced' tribe will notice.

Cook kicks picture credit: how's your edge.

the many different faces of brand consultancy

We are currently going through a process of selecting a brand consultancy to work with and we are amazed, scared and excited at the different responses to the brief.

Branding is an inexact art with many different interpretations (there are 4.3m Google image results for branding process) and certainly my brief wasn't perfect. We are focusing on a visual look and feel to move a logo-mark to true brand expression.

From the same brief we received straight to art, perceptual directions, initial strategic thought with no clarification, no questions and some brilliant questions back to our business. Confusion. But it is a useful process for the reflection back upon ourselves, refining and revealing our thinking and aesthetic preferences.

Tips for branding consultancies responding to a similar pitch:

1. Read the material given (sounds simple).

2. Ask more questions! The companies who didn't did not think things through properly and responded slightly off the mark.

3. Use visual stimuli: to help discussion, taking things away from terminology and into hearts

4. Some companies repeated back the reasons why we hired them as original thought. Nice validation but sounded strangely familiar...and patronising.

5. Get passionate - we're excited and we need our partners to be too!

6. Customise. Let the customer and need drive the process, not the other way around. A process by numbers makes a client feel like just another number.

For some other thinking on how to delight potential clients and show them that you 'get it', check out this article in campaign, comments on being memorable, great suggestions on all stages of responses from experienced hands via the IPA who mention the classic - chemistry (note, this is more specifically directed at advertising)

This is by no means a complete list - what has your experience been, from either a client or agency perspective?

Meanwhile - we are excited about heading to the next stage!

Any brand can ignite a movement with its
customers, so long as the brand can move people to believe in a company,
to believe in a better way, and to believe in themselves - John Moore.

Thank you for the inspiration, John (brand autopsy blog).

Is the best creative in the building your Finance Manager?

Ongoing research by Humantific in a fascinating project to understand the design thinking process, Design Thinking Made Visible, found that some students in Business Schools had the same type of creative thinking, in the truest sense of the word, as creative students. And vice versa.

So - what innovation goodness are we missing out in our marketing-led ideation sessions?

Can you invite the Finance Manager, the bus-boy or the logistics co-ordinator into the room next time you have have an ideation session? They may just be the spark that ignites your next success.

If not - you may all just have had a lot of fun in the process. Great!

Let me know how it goes :)

Hat tip to @Rubyku for sharing the research project. Thank you, it's awesome :)

Why is it the inside that matters?

It has been hot here in London. Yes, you read right, an Australian calling London hot! Amongst the over-heated crowd I noticed patterns peeking out from beneath thonged feet (flip flops for non-antipodeans).

Why would someone go to the effort of buying shoes where you can barely see the pattern?

I was reminded of a time when a friend showed me his fine new work shoes, but was most excited by the inner lining depicting a sunset scene. Likewise, a hand-bag maker once told me that often, the reason people bought her bags was because of the lining (I too was seduced by the lining for my Nancy Bird bag). Recently I was researching a client's online experience and the one thing that customers repeatedly mentioned was their delight in the wrapping. Clearly the same occurs for Apple lovers given the recent spate of 'unwrapping' videos.

Expanding the thought, the same delight in discovering an unexpected interior occurs with houses (warehouse conversions), service and even people such as Susan Boyle.

I am not sure there is a straight answer to the question "Why is it the inside that matters?", but I think it can start to be explained by an overall concept of consumption=personal. It is that feeling that the design or moment is rare and can only be experienced by me (or a select few). They are all richly sensory moments, from the vividness of a pattern to the texture of fine silk lining. It ties into the notion of brand experience, or moment of truth for a brand.

One thing is for sure - it is at that moment that your 'thing' becomes personal. You connect. And the love and loyalty begin.

How can you create something special on the inside to delight your customers, and keep them coming back? Or have you already? Why do you think it is the inside that matters?

photo credit: nancybird

how to touch the untouchable?

Is your customer hard to get to, let alone have a conversation with?

Well...why are you trying to have a conversation with them?

Why should they listen?

Maybe it is us who should be doing the listening. To what they have to say.

Mack Collier (@mackcollier) recently shared that Dell customers would be willing to pay more to get better service. An interesting finding for a highly price driven category. Kraft listened when the public told them that the name for the new version of the iconic Australian brand Vegemite, iSnack 2.0, stunk and killed the name in 4 days. As a result both brands have gained much positive media exposure for the way they listened to customers.

Maybe your customer (or potential customer) is not untouchable, they merely expect you to get to know them a little better first?

Flickr photo credit: Verces300

Does your brand have a life after death?

I recently saw an amazing Ted Talk by Dr Nicholas Christakis about the social connections between people and how they affect health outcomes. It got me thinking about how social connections affect brand.

They showed that there is a hard correlation between people with obesity - so much so that if one of your direct connections is obese, you have a 45% likelihood to be obese also. This diminishes with distance of connection.
Why is this?

Dr Christakis categorises 3 main drivers for this 1) induction, if I gain weight it causes you to gain weight 2) homophily, or birds of a feather flocking together and 3) confounding (science speak for some effect that we haven't yet been able to identify). They found that all 3 elements were in play affecting the incidence of obesity. You are not only affected by others, associate with people like yourself....but the effect of that lingers beyond your connection, even beyond death! What lingers goes beyond immediate cause and effect - it becomes part of the fabric, ideas and norms affecting the entire network.

Once the Idea, or connection exists, it remains like a cloud in the air. Intrigued, they then tracked this for positivity, finding that like a common cold, postivity is catching too.

We know that Word of Mouth (WOM) is one of the strongest stimuli influencing purchase behaviour (for B2B and B2C). But what happens when we go beyond WOM as a purchase influencer to the notion of a Sustainable Idea?

Some examples of this notion of a sustainable Idea that is harnessed and propogated by a brand are Earth Hour, Contours (the notion of fast, effective and female friendly workouts), Facebook (an online meeting place) and Nike (perform at all points in your life). Which brands do you think do this well?

What Sustainable Ideas exist around your brand, your business and importantly your tribe? How can you help them spread, connect and grow so you too can spread your own brand of positivity, even after the death of your current campaign?

hat tip: Heidi Allen for pointing out this amazing piece of work. Flickr credit:Binkiexxx

Saturated? Try a sweet tip from the Italians.

Ice cream. You would think that a product whose consumption is weather, leisure and time of day dependent would have a finite saturation point.
Not in Italy!
I was reminded of one of marketing's fundamental principles - to increase total consumption = amount consumed per occasion x no. of occasions.

How do they do it? Well, I saw glamorous fashion girls eating ice cream at work, people strolling at midnight munching, people by themselves, people with their families, people eating ice cream at 10 in the morning. In Italy, ice cream is an any-time snack! The no. of consumption occasions is unlimited.

How do they do it?

• Opening hours are longer for ice cream locations (except supermarkets!!) and it is in many different types of stores.
  
• Consumption is embedded in everyday behaviours - as kids they learn ice cream time is any time!
• There is a broad appeal - even svelte shop girls can be seen eating it
• They create a fabulous product...mmmm gelato!
• Each of the gelato stores does things with a unique twist, be it saucer-shaped scoops, funky packaging or generous mountains of gelato on display.
  

Have you thought about the basics for your brand recently? How can you increase the times that people can enjoy your product? A couple of great ways to stimulate our ideas on this can be (solo or brainstorming):

• Map the phases of the day - i.e. early morning, late morning, lunch etc and map out activities, emotions and social activities that occur - how could your product (or a new version of your product) sweeten that moment?
• Set yourself a challenge - each person need to come up with 5 new times/ways that people could benefit from your product in new occasions and why. Give yourself 10 minutes to do and then discuss.
  
• Drill down into the 1) emotional and 2) rational benefits of your brand - where else could you apply these benefits to your customers?

Have you seen any great examples of brands extending their occasions? Do you have a curly product that you are struggling to do this with? Tell us about it!
flickr photo credit: vicbrasil

Looking in the global mirror.

Recently, I read the McKinsey Five Forces Shaping the Global Economy Report and my, what an interesting read. It is a useful mirror to reflect on our level of global and innovative thinking. One of the sharp moments of reflection that this report should give any business person in a developed market is the realisation that maybe we just think we are innovative. Some snippets:

Chinese and Indian companies are developing business models at faster rate [than companies in developed markets].

US companies are least likely to amend practices to take advantage of opportunities in developing markets.

[on the list of how companies plan to act to harness opportunities in a more global market] the lowest is developing a local brand (17%).

The biggest perceived benefit of increased information flow globally is innovation (40%).

Starting with new business models. Yes, as there is increasing corporatisation in developing countries it is natural that they are more focused on evolving business models. However, this a timely reminder that just because our model has worked well for a while - have we thought about whether it will work in the future? Have you? (for some great thinking and debate, check out Alex Osterwalker)

Why is developing a local brand the lowest preferable option? This too should have an accompanying sharp stab of recognition of how self-centric companies in-market can be. Firstly, if brand is about creating meaningful connections with customers - why aren't we considering local brands? (not delving deeper into the global:local brand debate here). Who says the next big global brand won't grow from a small town in South Africa?

Ironically, despite the scepticism of the true value of creating a globalised organisation (as opposed to a more consumers = more dollars view), 40% of companies expect to improve innovation through increased global information flow. Does that mean that we are happy to continue to treat global markets as yet another data point? What would happen if you walked around an Indian supermarket with your local team? What ideas and expertise would you find?

I think this report presents a great opportunity to re-look, really-look at how global we are, and how global we can become. In terms of revenue, innovation of product and business models and of meaningful activities in the world.

Are you really global?

connections?

your place is YOUR PLACE

Yesterday I saw a super happy person.
A younger women, in uniform, in a work car and working by herself. For a utility of all things.
Yet she emanated happiness and focus.
Why? Because she was surrounded by her own music, was wearing the uniform with her own style and was doing things her way. And she was working late too.
She had made wherever she was HER place.

How are you making your place(s) YOURS?


(In an inspired frame of mind thanks to Linchpin by Seth Godin, Matt at Life without Pants and @MelissaGorzela)

photo credit: whsimages

Are we looking the other way?

Thinking about corporate social responsibility in particular this week. And I wonder, are we looking the other way?
With all the focus on ROS, ROE, ROI....are we looking at things in reverse?

Sure, we need to find money to support change initiatives and do so sustainably. But who has REALLY ever changed behaviour because of their head, logic and the company's money. I think we are looking the wrong way....with all the focus on return.... we are missing the point.
It is good. It feels good. It helps. It makes others feel good.
And that feeling is what really drives sustained engagement and change.
Money shmoney. If people (who make up companies) believe and it is their hearts that are engaged, they will find a way to make it sustainable financially.

What do you think? Are these glasses too rosy?
photo credit, the very cute Derek (lilbuttz)

respect, the non-shiny kind

With all the business heroes, stars and mavens, it's easy to forget the other star performers.
Those who have little (at least to begin with).
Yet somehow, their children end up going to good schools and performing well at University. And perhaps they own their own home outright. Or they manage to pay the rent and eat well.
These are the people who I admire, who work 350 days in the year, making little, but little by little, and with clear goals and values - transforming their lives.

And they are successful. In their own way.

They show courage, positivity, hard work and a determined vision of what they would like to achieve. If they can come so far, perhaps we can learn from them and make that special project happen, achieve that raise or maybe, change our world.

respect.

photo credit: kdriese